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HISTORICAL SKETCH 



SECOND WAR 

BETWEEN THE 

/ 3J m 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

AND 

GEEAT BRITAIN, 

DECLARED BY 

ACT OF CONGRESS, THE 18th OF JUNE, 1812, 
AND CONCLUDED BY PEACE, THE 15th OF FEBRUARY, 1815. 

BY 

CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 



IN T I I R E-E - VOLUMES. 
VOL. I. 

EMBRACING THE EVENTS OF 1812-13. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

LEA AND BLANCHARD. 

1845. 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 
LEA AND BLANCHARD, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the "Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

T. K & P G. COLLINS, 

TRINTERS. 



/ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



7 



Declaration of War. — Effects. — Causes and Character by Dallas. — John Adams. — 
Eastern Clergy. — American Church. — Debt. — Wm. Lowndes. — Massachusetts. 
Timothy Pickering. — War Loans. — Daniel Webster. — Rufus King. — Jeremiah 
Mason. — Executive Administration. — Foreign Relations - - - 13 

CHAPTER II. 

Invasion of Canada. — Halifax Campaign. — Hull's Expedition.— Capture ofMichi- 
limacinack. — Hull's Surrender. — Loss of Michigan. — General Craig. — Capture 
of the frigate Guerriere. — Captain Hull. — General Van Rensselaer. — Battle of 
Queenstown. — General Smythe. — General Scott. — Militia. — Smythe's Failure. 
— Northern Army. — General Dearborn. — Colonel Duane. — End of Campaign 
of 1812 - - 74 

CHAPTER III. 
Congress. — Special Session of 1813.— Tax Bills.— John W. Eppes. James Plea- 
sants. — Jonathan Roberts. — Timothy Pitkin. — William W. Bibb. — Hugh Nel- 
son. — Preparation for War. — Pensions. — Privateers. — Secret Session. — Mr. 
Gallatin's Nomination -------- 10o 



CHAPTER IV. 

Military Operations of 1813. — North-Western Army. — Kentucky Volunteers- 
General Harrison. — Winchester. — Massacre at River Raisin. — Sieges at Fort 
Meigs. — Repulse at Sandusky. — Croghan. — .Naval Battle on Lake Erie. — .Perry. 
—Elliott.— Barclay. _--,,,-- 130 

CHAPTER V. 

Walk-in-the-Water's Tradition of the Indian Naval Engagement on Lake Erie 158 

CHAPTER VI. 

Harrison's Invasion of Canada. — Proctor destroys Maiden and retreats. — Tecum- 
seh's Remonstrance. — Pursuit of Proctor. — Johnson's Mounted Regiment. — 
Battle of the Thames. — Surrender of English. — Proctor's Flight. — Death of 
Tecumseh. — Indian Subordination by English. — Enormity of that Alliance. — 
Its Demoralizing Effects. — Law of Nations thereupon. — Harrison goes to Buf- 
falo — Thence to Washington — And Ohio. — His Resignation. — Illumination for 
his and Perry's Victories. — Joseph Hopkinson - 174 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Coast Warfare. — Arrival of Admiral Warren with British Fleets. — Blockades of 
the United States except New England. Marauding Expeditions of Admiral 
Cockburn. — Burning Havre de Grace, Frenchtown, Fredericktown, George- 
town. — Enemy repulsed at Lewistown. — Defeated at Craney Island. — Feeble- 
ness of Naval Power in Land Warfare. — Its Illegalities. — Attempt to burn the 
Frigate Constellation. — Capture of Hampton by British Land and Naval Forces. 
— Barbarities there. — Mr. Clay's Motion in Congress for a Committee to Report 
on the Subject. — Committee Appointed, Nathaniel Macon, Chairman. — His 
Political Portrait ...-----193 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Taxes. — Direct Tax. — Tax on refined Sugar. — Sales at Auction. — Retailers' Li- 
censes. — Stamps. — Carriages. — Stills. — Produce of Taxes under Washington's, 
Adams', and Madison's Administration. — Selection of Collectors. — Cost of Col- 
lection. — Reduction of Taxes after War. — Dallas's System. — Monroe's Admin- 
istration. — Taxes Repealed. — Crawford, Secretary of Treasury. — Tabular 
Statements of Taxation. — Debate and Votes on Repeal of System of Internal 
Revenue. — Effect on Impost. — Tariff of Duties. — War Loans. — Paper Money. 
— American and English National Debt and Credit. — Suspension of Specie 
Payments by Banks. — Evils of Irresponsible Banking. — Effects of War on Re- 
sources of United States. — Commissioner of Revenue. — Samuel Harrison 
Smith. — President Madison --_.... 218 

CHAPTER IX. 

Northern Campaign. — Eustis resigns the War Department. — Armstrong ap- 
pointed Secretary of War. — Plan of Campaign to attack Kingston. — General 
Pike. — Town Meeting at Philadelphia. — Generals Dearborn and Pike capture 
York. — Pike's Death. — Indian Scalp in Canadian Parliament House. — Revolu- 
tionary Indian Barbarities. — Capture of Fort George by the Americans. — Re- 
pulse of the English by General Brown at Sackett's Harbour. — Enormous Ex- 
penses of Border and Lake War. — Generals Chandler and Winder surprised 
and captured by General Vincent at Forty Mile Creek. — Colonel Burn retreats. 
— General Lewis ordered to reinforce him. — Recalled by General Dearborn. — 
Colonel Boerstler's Surrender at the Beaver Dams. — General Dearborn re- 
moved from command of the Northern Army. — Succeeded ad interim by Ge- 
neral Boyd. — Ordered not to act offensively. — Cooped up in Fort George all 
Summer. — General Wilkinson takes command there in September. — State and 
Number of the Forces at Sackett's Harbour, Fort George and Champlain. — - 
Expedition against Montreal. — Generals Armstrong, Wilkinson and Hampton. 
— Their Plans and Feuds. — Hampton invades Canada — Is repulsed in Septem- 
ber, and again in October. — Chauncey gets command of Lake Ontario. — Wil- 
kinson's Descent of the St. Lawrence to attack Montreal. — Description and 
Disasters of that Voyage. — Brave and successful Resistance of the English. — 
Battle of Williamsburg. — Correspondence between Hampton and Wilkinson. — 
Hampton refuses to join Wilkinson, who abandons the Expedition. — Public 
Opinion respecting it. — Newspaper Accounts. — General M'Clure destroys Fort 
George, and retreats to Fort Niagara. — Burns Queenstown. — British retaliate. — 
Surprise Fort Niagara, and lay waste Western New York. — Impressions at 
Washington. — Blue-lights reported by Decatur, as seen to give notice of his 
movements. — English triumphs in Europe, and America embolden their War- 
fare. — Disastrous close of Northern Campaign in 1813 ... 266 



CONTENTS. v 

CHAPTER X. 

Southern Campaign against the Creek Indians. — Act of Congress for taking pos- 
session of that part of Louisiana which Spain withheld as part of Florida. — 
Mobile seized by General Wilkinson. — Tecumseh and his Brother, the Pro- 
phet, visit the Creeks to rouse them to War. — Spanish connivance with Eng- 
land for this purpose. — Creek Revolt and Civil War. — Fort Mitchell. — Indian 
Patriot and Peace Party, the young for war, the old oppose it. — Outbreak. — 
Desultory murders. — Massacre at Fort Minims. — Georgia and Tennessee under- 
take their own defence. — Georgia Militia. — Generals Floyd and Flournoy. — 
Tennessee Militia. — Generals White, Claiborne, Coffee, Carroll, Jackson. — 
Battles of Tallushatchee, Talledega, Ecconochacca, and Hillabee. — Militia 
and Volunteers of Tennessee and Georgia insubordinate. — Many of them go 
home. — Campaign suspended for want of troops. — Character of sudden levies 
for short service. — Reinforcements. — Andrew Jackson. — Battle of Emuchfau 
or the Horse-Shoe. — Indians subdued — Dispersed — Sue for Peace. — Weather- 
ford surrenders himself to Jackson. — Meeting of Generals Pinckney and Jack- 
son at Toulouse. — Spanish Treaty of 1795. — Negotiated by Pinckney, enforced 
by Jackson. — Reflections on the past and future actions of those two generals 
— As to the effects of the Creek campaign. — President's Message to Congress 
on the subject _-_._._. 316 

CHAPTER XI. 

NAVAL WARFARE. 

Commercial and Belligerent Foundations of American Navy. — Nelson's view of it. 
— Seizure of Frigate Chesapeake. — Impressment and commercial wrong. — Dis- 
cipline and confidence of the American Navy. — Want of discipline and over- 
confidence of British. — American superiority. — English Navy unequal in force 
to American, in America in 1S12. — English Ships enumerated — And American. 
— Culpable negligence and timidity of American Government. — Determined to 
lay up Navy as port defences when it might have subdued that of England. — 
English views of that subject. — Mr. Gallatin's Scheme. — Visit of Captains 
Bainbridge and Stewart to Washington. — Their remonstrance against disman- 
tling the Navy. — Madison yields to it. — Frigate Constitution's first Cruize and 
capture of the Guerriere contrary to orders. — Chase of the Constitution by 
English Squadron. — Chase of the Belvidera by American Squadron. — Seaboard 
sentiment concerning Navy. — Dread of England. — Capture of the Guerriere. 
— English views of it. — Capture of the Queen Charlotte and Detroit on Lake 
Erie. — Frolic by Wasp. — Macedonian by United States. — Java by Constitu- 
tion. — Peacock by Hornet. — Bainbridge. — Decatur. — Hull. — Capture of Chesa- 
peake by Shannon. — Lawrence. — His Challenge ofLa Bonne Citoyenne. — Lieu- 
tenant Cox. — His Court Martial. — Salutary National Effects of the loss of the 
Chesapeake by counteraction of Eastern disaffection. — Salutary Naval Effects 
of Lawrence's indiscretion. — Mr. Quincy's Resolutions in the Senate of Massa- 
chusetts. — Navy adopted by the Nation. — Cruises of the Frigates President, 
Congress, and Essex. — Naval American Capacity. — Inefficiency of English Ma- 
rine. — Comparative cost of war and peace by sea. — Lake Warfare. — On Cham- 
plain — On Ontario. — Chauncey's pursuit of Yeo. — Running fight. — Yeo*s Es- 
cape and Chauncey's omission to destroy the English Fleet. — Contest of Ship- 
building. — Enormous expense of lake conflicts by land and water. — Lord 
Cochrane's Resolutions in the House of Commons. — Comparison of American 
and English Marine. — Captures of the two from each other in 1 S 12 and 1S13. 
— Superiority of the American. — Causes of it. — War of 1812 made American 
Navy from long-prepared materials. — Its character — And rewards - - 361 



yi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Provisional Armistice, July, 1812, between Baynes and Dearborn. — Rejected by 
Madison — who insists on abandonment of Impressment. — American terms of 
Pacification rejected by England. — English terms refused by America. — Corre- 
spondence, October and November, 1812, between Warren and Monroe. — 
War inevitable. — American soldiers seized as British subjects to be executed 
as traitors. — American retaliation. — Correspondence on the subject between 
Dearborn, Prevost, and Wilkinson. — General excitement. — Enormity of the 
English attempt — Finally abandoned. — Russian Mediation. — Gallatin, Adams, 
and Bayard appointed Envoys under it. — Moreau. — Envoys embark for St. Pe- 
tersburgh. — Gallatin writes to Baring. — British Ministry. — Castlereagh. — Brit- 
ish designs. — Spurn mediation. — Offer to treat at London or Gottenburgh. — 
Festivals for Russian victories. — Mr. Otis's speech to Eustaphieve, the Russian 
Consul. — Festivals for American Naval Victories opposed. — Governor Strong's 
Message to Legislature of Massachusetts. — Their Response. — Proceedings in 
Parliament. — Castlereagh's Motion and Speech. — Alexander Baring. — Foster 
charges American government with French influence. — British Influence in 
New England. — Mr. Webster's Resolutions in the House of Representatives. — 
Mr. Calhoun's Report on them. — Mr. Monroe's Answer to them. — Turreau's 
Letter. — Hanson's Motion. — French Intervention in the war considered. — Its 
advantages prevented by British Influence. — Joel Barlow's Negotiations with 
France — Merely commercial — Forbearing political connection. — Barlow in- 
vited to Wilna to sign a treaty — Dies in Poland — Is succeeded in July, 1S13, 
by Crawford as Minister to France. — M. Serurier, French Minister at Wash- 
ington. — Embargo — Recommended by President in July, then rejected by Se- 
nate, enacted in December — Ineffectual — And repealed ... 443 






HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



CHAPTER I. 

DECLARATION OF WAR. — EFFECTS. — CAUSES AND CHARACTER BY 
DALLAS.— JOHN ADAMS.— EASTERN CLERGY.— AMERICAN CHURCH.— 
DEBT— WM. LOWNDES— MASSACHUSETTS.— TIMOTHY PICKERING.— 
WAR LOANS.— DANIEL WEBSTER.— RUFUS KING.— JEREMIAH MASON. 
—EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATION.— FOREIGN RELATIONS. 

In this historical sketch I shall endeavour to submit the truth 
in an account of the contest between Great Britain and the 
United States of America, declared by act of Congress, approved 
the 18th of June, 1812. vjt enacted that war was thereby declared 
to exist between the United Kingdoms of Great Britainand Ireland 
and the Dependencies thereof, and the United States of America 
and their Territories ; and that the President of the United States 
was thereby authorized to use the whole land and naval force 
of the United States to carry the same into effect, and to issue 
to private armed vessels of the United States commissions, or 
letters of marque and general reprisal, in such form as he should 
think proper and under the seal of the United States, against 
the vessels, goods, and effects of the government of the said 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the subjects 
thereof. ) 

This short act is the first declaration of war by law enacted 
through all the deliberative forms, debates and sanctions of the 
public proceedings of two distinct and independent houses of 
national representatives in congress, assembled from the distant 
regions of a republic of confederated states, approved by an elec- 
tive chief magistrate, pursuant to the provisions of an organized 

VOL. I. 2 



14 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

written constitution, that such congress alone shall declare war. 
The judicial, an independent department of American govern- 
ment, with the common proneness to diversity of judgment, 
differed radically in opinion whether legislative declaration of 
war imparts to the executive and enforces on the community the 
whole belligerent power of forcibly executing it against enemies, 
depriving them of liberty and property, and life if need be, with- 
out further more specific legislative enactment. Be that as it 
may, as will hereafter be examined, constitutional transfer of the 
war-declaring faculty from the executive to a legislature is an 
inestimable pledge of peace and preventive of wanton war, first 
conferred on mankind by American republican institutions^ 

This short and comprehensive act was drawn by William 
Pinkney, then Attorney-General of the United States, in which 
office, not long before, he succeeded Cgesar Augustus Rodney, 
"f The war of the Revolution began in tumult and rebellion, was 
waged by the imposition of martial law for regular authority ; 
and closed by an act of national bankruptcy, leaving an imper- 
fect union of barely confederated States, discontented and exani- 
mate, poor and intractable. During the Revolution the country 
was rent by civil discord; the tories could, with some reason, 
plead the merits of loyalty. The war of 1812, solemnly declared 
in constitutional method, was waged in due subordination to law, 
opposed on less justifiable grounds, and terminated with manifold 
meliorations, since as generally acknowledged as those of the 
peace of independence. Comraerce, manufactures, navigation, 
agriculture, national character, the respect of other nations, Great 
Britain especially, and confidence in republican institutions, till 
then by no means great, even among Americans themselves; 
derived from less than three years of excitement by war, advan- 
tages which peace could not have conferred. The war of the 
Revolution left unpaid a national debt of near 360 millions of 
dollars; whereas, not long after the war of 1812, a debt of 123 
millions was paid. An A merican historian, Ramsey, considers that 
the talents of the people of the United States were improved by 
the war of the Revolution, but that their morals were deteriorated. 
The physical and mental capacities of the country were all ad- 
vanced by the war of 1812, without moral or political detriment. 
The government since has been as republican as before ; while the 
tone of public and private morality has been much more impaired 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 15 

by long peace since, than it was by that war. Like the Revolu- 
tion, the war of 1812 was inevitable and defensive ; put off longer 
before extorted from intolerable, wrongs ; undertaken for vindica- 
tion, not aggrandizement, although Canadian conquest was to 
be one of its means. The cause was as just ; the preparation 
greater; also the forbearance; and the consequences as beneficial. 
Moral, physical, and mental independence were achievements of 
the conflict of 1812 as much as political emancipation that of 1775^/ i*&* 
The common, perhaps salutary impression, that the Revolution 
was more unanimously supported, is a mistake. The majorities 
in Congress on all the essential principles in 1774 were extremely 
small. The Declaration of Independence was carried with diffi- 
culty, if not by accident. Most of the great questions of measures 
and men from 1774 to 1778, were decided in Congress by the 
vote of a single state, and that often by the vote of one man. 
The nation was more divided in the war of the Revolution than 
in that of IS 12. There was no overt treason in the latter. 

Destiny seems to delight to bring about great results from insig- 
nificant and doubtful beginnings, inexplicable commotions, like 
vast conflagrations from mere sparks. It may be questioned' 
whether any great revolution originated with the will of a majo- 
rity. Where freedom prevails, submission of minorities to osten- 
sible majorities becomes a fundamental doctrine. However small 
the majority, it means all the nation. In monarchies, the monarch 
or his minister rules instead of the majority. In republics, that 
mysterious and overruling power, the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple, seen nowhere, felt everywhere, resides in a mere majority; 
and in war, as was the case in that of 1812, large, acrimonious 
minorities, which exasperate, may corroborate the majority, and 
elicit great national exploits. Republicans deride the dogma of 
kings' divine right : Americans can hardly comprehend it. Their 
government rests on an antagonist principle. Yet philosophically 
analyzed, is the sovereignty of the people perfectly obvious? In- 
visible and intangible reality governing all, where is it palpable ? 
Directly it makes none of the laws of which it is indirectly the 
sole author. It is diffused throughout the mass whose will begets 
and controls public opinion by individual agency, and its voice 
may be compared to that of the Deity in power, inscrutable and 
irresponsible. War between the principles of popular sovereignty 
and the divine right of kings, begun by the American Declara- 



16 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

tion of Independence, has spread over nearly all the new and 
much of the old world. Whatever be the fact, majorities are at 
least supposed to govern, and minorities to submit. The wars of 
1775 and 1812 between Great Britain and the United States of 
America, were waged by nations both acknowledging the sove- 
reignty of the people. Probably, the English and American 
commonwealths, in rebellions against established governments, 
united the most perfect examples of individual subordination 
with national liberty. 

My sketch of the war of 1812 will present only what I had 
good opportunity to know by actual instrumentality in the gov- 
ernment of the United States from the meeting of the special 
session of Congress, 24th of May, 1813, till the peace announced 
at Washington, the 15th of February, 1S15. During the three 
war sessions of Congress in that period, I was there on intimate 
and confidential terms with most of those who governed. With 
natural preferences, party and personal prejudices, my narrative 
shall, nevertheless, be authentic and candid according to my own 
impressions: long meditated, yet not composed till interval enough 
for experience by results and calm consideration, now published 
for the good, and dedicated to the honour of my country. 

The method is free, familiar, desultory, without pretension to 
historical dignity. Errors there must be, but no misrepresenta- 
tion ; as near the truth as cotemporary statement may come ; 
truer than the fictions of posterior history. Without regal or 
revolutionary annals, European magnitude of events and charac- 
ters to describe, but the plain, comparatively small, often dull 
transactions of a new and peculiar nation, the embellishments 
and attractions of most history are not to be expected. To exhi- 
bit plainly the causes and course of the war, its legislative, econo- 
mical, jurisprudential and belligerent operations, is my attempt; 
submitted to the indulgent judgment of my countrymen, without 
acrimonious condemnation of the great people the war was waged 
against, whose wrongs and misconduct, however, being the bur- 
then of the story, must be told as they merit, without extenuation 
or suppression, or the truth will not be told at all. 

The first war between the United States and Great Britain was 
a contest for political independence, accomplished. The second 
war between them was for maritime and personal independence, 
also mainly effected. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 18 12. 27 

Still, however, a contest for commerce, manufactures, and terri- 
tories continues, national rivalry and antagonism, fomented by the 
press, inseparable from the intimacy of national relations, which 
may produce another war. 

Should it be so, the United States will never be the aggressor. 
Innumerable sympathies bind us to Great Britain with reveren- 
tial attachments. He must be unnatural, who, with nothing but 
English blood in his veins, reviles Great Britain. But the greatest 
of American regenerations is to become perfectly independent of 
the vast influences of that mighty nation among her former colo- 
nies. 

It is impossible not to admire her grandeur, at least to respect 
her power, and grateful to an American to do justice to her 
glory. 

Yet, he would be an unfaithful annalist and an unworthy 
American, who, in an account of the vengeance which his coun- 
try was constrained to take for the wrongs England inflicted, 
hesitates to describe the misdeeds her public agents were guilty 
of in endeavours to maintain those wrongs. To preserve peace 
hereafter, a full exposure of them is not only truer but wiser 
than suppression or extenuation. Malicious or ungenerous 
recollections of war are unmanly and impolitic. But amnesty is 
not oblivion. 

The duty of history to our own country, moreover, requires 
its vindication, if consistent with truth. The first war between 
the United States and Great Britain proved that the American 
nation is capable of self-defence. The second war demonstrated, 
as events show, the strength of republican and confederated na- 
tionality. We were right, and triumphed in the second as in the 
first. Nothing can so effectually prevent a third, as convincing 
both nations, by recurrence to the former, what may be expected 
of another contest in arms. 

The character of the war is well expressed in the last sentence 
of the President's Message to Congress, convened by him in 
special session to vote the means of waging it. "The contest in 
which the U. States engaged appealed for its support, to every 
motive that can animate an uncorrupted and enlightened people ; 
to the love of country ; to the pride of liberty ; to an emulation 
of the glorious founders of their independence, by a successful 
vindication of its violated attributes ; to the gratitude and sym- 

2* 



18 



HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 



pathy which demand security from the most degrading wrongs, 
of a class of citizens who have proved themselves so worthy the 
protection of their country by their heroic zeal in its defence ; 
and finally, to the sacred obligation of transmitting entire, to 
future generations, that precious patrimony of national rights 
and independence held in trust by the present, from the goodness 
of divine providence." 

These animating sentiments are now cherished by nfost Ameri- 
cans in grateful acknowledgment of the national benefits of that 
war, including its opponents generally in the United States, and 
even many of its foreign enemies. A large, intelligent, united, 
and imposing portion of the people, nevertheless, disputed and 
condemned the measures, and denied the justice of the war, and 
thwarted its progress. Without malicious exposure of their 
errors, refutation of them is much of the lesson history is to 
teach ; especially as our former English enemies, notwithstanding 
continued abuse of this country, seldom deny the merits of the 
war of 1812. 

My narrative is therefore premised by a vindication of the war 
extracted from Mr. Dallas's admirable exposition of its causes and 
character, prepared towards the close of it, in the midst of his la- 
bours as Secretary of the Treasury, and intended as an official 
manifesto ; but peace coming before it was published, this masterly 
defence did not appear till success rendered its publication less 
important. Mr. Dallas says, 

" And if, in fine, the assertion, that it has been a policy, by all 
honourable means, to cultivate with Great Britain, those senti- 
ments of mutual good will, which naturally belong to nations 
connected by the ties of a common ancestry, an identity of lan- 
guage, and a similarity of manners, be doubted, the proofs will 
be found in that patient forbearance, under the pressure of accu- 
mulating wrongs, which marks the period of almost thirty years, 
that elapsed between the peace of 17S3 and the rupture of 1S12. 

"The United States had just recovered, under the auspices of 
their present constitution, from the debility which their revolu- 
tionary struggle had produced, when the convulsive movements 
of France excited throughout the civilized world, the mingled 
sensations of hope and fear— of admiration and alarm. The 
interest which those movements would, in themselves, have 
excited, was incalculably increased, however, as soon as Great 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 19 

Britain became a party to the first memorable coalition against 
France, and assumed the character of a belligerent power ; for, 
it was obvious, that the distance of the scene would no longer 
exempt the United States from the influence, and the evils, of 
the European conflict. On the one hand, their government was 
connected with France, by treaties of alliance and commerce ; 
and the services which that nation had rendered to the cause of 
American independence, had made such impressions upon the 
public mind, as no virtuous statesman could rigidly condemn, 
and the most rigorous statesman would have sought in vain to 
efface. On the other hand, Great Britain, leaving the treaty of 
1783 unexecuted, forcibly retained the American posts upon the 
northern frontier ; and, slighting every overture to place the di- 
plomatic and commercial relations of the two countries upon a 
fair and friendly foundation, 1 seemed to contemplate the success 
of the American revolution, in a spirit of unextinguishable ani- 
mosity. Her voice had, indeed, been heard from Quebec and 
Montreal, instigating the savages to war. 2 Her invisible arm 
was felt, in the defeats of General Harmer, 3 and General St. 
Clair, 4 and even the victory of General Wayne 5 was achieved in 
the presence of a fort which she had erected, far within the terri- 
torial boundaries of the United States, to stimulate and counte- 
nance the barbarities of the Indian warrior. 6 Yet, the American 
government, neither yielding to popular feeling, nor acting upon 
the impulse of national resentment, hastened to adopt the policy 
of a strict and steady neutrality ; and solemnly announced that 
policy to the citizens at home, and to the nations abroad, by the 
proclamation of the 22d of April, 1793." 

" Some relaxation in the rigour, without any alteration in the 
principle, of the order in council of the 6th of November, 1793, 
was introduced by the subsequent orders of the Sth of January, 
1794, and the 25th of January, 1798: but from the ratification 
of the treaty of 1794, until the short respite afforded by the treaty 
of Amiens, in 1S02, the commerce of the United States continued 

' Mr. Adams' Correspondence. 
- Speeches of Lord Dorchester. 

3 On the waters of the Miami of the lake, on the 21st of October, 1790. 

4 At Fort Recovery, on the 4th of November, 1791. 

5 On the Miami of the lakes, in August, 1794. 

6 Correspondence between Mr. Randolph, the American Secretary of State, and 
Mr. Hammond, the British plenipotentiar}-, dated May and June, 1794. 






20 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

to be the prey of British cruisers and privateers, under the adju- 
dicating patronage of the British tribunals. Another grievance, 
however, assumed at this epoch a form and magnitude which 
cast a shade over the social happiness, as well as the political 
independence of the nation. The merchant vessels of the United 
States were arrested on the high seas, while in the prosecution of 
distant voyages ; considerable numbers of their crews were im- 
pressed into the naval service of Great Britain ; the commercial 
adventures of the owners were often, consequently, defeated ; 
and the loss of property, the embarrassments of trade and navi- 
gation, and the scene of domestic affliction, became intolerable. 
This grievance (which constitutes an important surviving cause 
of the American declaration of war) was early, and has been 
incessantly, urged upon the attention of the British government. 
Even in the year 1792, they were told of 'the irritation that it 
had excited ; and of the difficulty of avoiding to make immediate 
reprisals on their seamen in the United States.' 1 They were told 
' that so many instances of the kind had happened, that it was 
quite necessary that they should explain themselves on the sub- 
ject, and be led to disavow and punish such violence, which had 
never been experienced from any other nation.' 2 And they were 
told 'of the inconvenience of such conduct, and of the impossi- 
bility of letting it go on, so that the British ministry should be 
made sensible of the necessity of punishing the past, and prevent- 
ing the future.' 3 But after the treaty of amity, commerce, and 
navigation, had been ratified, the nature and the extent of the 
grievance became still more manifest; and it was clearly and 
firmly presented to the view of the British government, as lead- 
ing unavoidably to discord and war between the two nations. 
They were told, l that unless they would come to some accom- 
modation which might ensure the American seamen against this 
oppression, measures would be taken to cause the inconvenience 
to be equally felt on both sides.' 4 They were told, 'that the 
impressment of American citizens, to serve on board of British 
armed vessels, was not only an injury to the unfortunate indi- 

1 Letter of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, to Mr. Pinkney, minister at London, 
dated the 11th of June, 1792. 

2 Letter from the same to the same, dated the 12th of October, 1792. 

3 Letter from the same to the same, dated the 6th of November, 1792. 

* Letter from Mr. Pinkney, minister at London, to the Secretary of State, dated 
the 13th of March, 1793. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1 SI 2. 21 

viduals, but it naturally excited certain emotions in the breasts 
of the nation to whom they belonged, and of the just and humane 
of every country ; and that an expectation was indulged that 
orders would be given, that the Americans so circumstanced 
should be immediately liberated, and that the British officers 
should, in future, abstain from similar violences.' 1 They were 
told, < that the subject was of much greater importance than had 
been supposed ; and that, instead of a few, and those in many 
instances equivocal cases, the American minister at the court of 
London had, in nine months (part of the years 1796 and 1797) 
made applications for tbe discharge of two hundred and seventy- 
one seamen, who had, in most cases, exhibited such evidence, as 
to satisfy him that they were real Americans, forced into the 
British service, and persevering, generally, in refusing pay and 
bounty.' 2 They were told, ' that if the British government had 
any regard to the rights of the United States, any respect for the 
nation, and placed any value on their friendship, it would facili- 
tate the means of relieving their oppressed citizens.' 3 They were 
told, 'that the British naval officers often impressed Swedes, 
Danes, and other foreigners, from the vessels of the United 
States; that they might, with as much reason, rob American 
vessels of the property or merchandize of Swedes, Danes, and 
Portuguese, as seize and detain hrtheir service, the subjects of 
those nations found on board of American vessels; and that the 
president was extremely anxious to have this business of im- 
pressing placed on a reasonable footing.' 4 And they were told, 
' that the impressment of American seamen was an injury of very 
serious magnitude, which deeply affected the feelings and honour 
of the nation; that no right had been asserted to impress the 
natives of America ; yet, that they were impressed ; they were 
dragged on board British ships of war, with the evidence of citi- 
zenship in their hands, and forced by violence there to serve, 
until conclusive testimonials of their birth could be obtained ; 
that many must perish unrelieved, and all were detained a con- 

1 Note of Mr. Jay, envoy extraordinary, to Lord Grenville, dated the 30th of 
July, 1794. 

2 Letter of Mr. King, minister at London, to the Secretary of State, dated the 
13th of April, 1797. 

3 Letter from Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, to Mr. King, minister at London, 
dated the 10th of September, 1796. 

4 Letter from the same to the same, dated the 26th of October, 1796. 



22 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

siderable time, in lawless and injurious confinement; that the con- 
tinuance of the practice must inevitably produce discord between 
two nations, which ought to be the friends of each other; and 
that it was more advisable to desist from, and to take effectual 
measures to prevent an acknowledged wrong, than by persever- 
ance in that wrong, to excite against themselves the well-founded 
resentments of America, and force the government into measures 
which may very possibly terminate in an open rupture.' 1 

" Such were the feelings and the sentiments of the American 
government, under every change of its administration, in relation 
to the British practice of impressment; and such the remon- 
strances addressed to the justice of Great Britain. It is obvious, 
therefore, that this cause, independent of every other, has been 
uniformly deemed a just and certain cause of war ; yet, the cha- 
racteristic policy of the United States still prevailed : remonstrance 
was only succeeded by negotiation ; and every assertion of 
American rights, was accompanied with an overture, to secure, 
in any practicable form, the rights of Great Britain. 2 Time 
seemed, however, to render it more and more difficult to ascer- 
tain and fix the standard of the British rights, according to the 
succession of the British claims. The right of entering and 
searching an American merchant ship, for the purpose of im- 
pressment, was, for awhile, confined to the case of British de- 
serters; and even so late as the month of February, 1800, the 
minister of his Britannic majesty, then at Philadelphia, urged the 
American government Ho take into consideration, as the only 
means of drying up every source of complaint and irritation, 
upon that head, a proposal which he had made two years before, 
in the name of his majesty's government, for the reciprocal resti- 
tution of deserters.' 3 But this project of a treaty was then 
deemed inadmissible, by the President of the United States, and 
the chief officers of the executive departments of the government, 
whom he consulted, for the same reason, specifically, which, at 
a subsequent period, induced the President of the United States 

1 Letter of Mr. Marshall, Secretary of State, (now Chief Justice of the United 
States,) to Mr. King, minister at London, dated the 20th of September, 1800. 

2 See particularly, Mr. King's propositions to Lord Grenville and Lord 
Hawkesbury, of the 13th of April, 1797, the 15th of March, 1799, the 25th of 
February, 1801, and in July, 1803. 

3 Mr. Liston's note to Mr. Pickering, the Secretary of State, dated the 4th of 
February, 1800. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 23 

to withhold his approbation from the treaty negotiated by the 
American ministers at London, in the year 1806 ; namely : ' that 
it did not sufficiently provide against the impressment of Ameri- 
can seamen f 1 and * that it is better to have no article, and to 
meet the consequences, than not to enumerate merchant vessels 
on the high seas, among the things not to be forcibly entered in 
search of deserters.' 2 But the British claim, expanding with 
singular elasticity, was soon found to include a right to enter 
American vessels on the high seas, in order to search for and 
seize all British seamen ; it next embraced the case of every 
British subject ; and, finally, in its practical enforcement, it has 
been extended to every mariner, who could not prove, upon the 
spot, that he was a citizen of the United States. 

" While the nature of the British claim was thus ambiguous 
and fluctuating, the principle to which it was referred, for justifi- 
cation and support, appeared to be, at once, arbitrary and illu- 
sory. It was not recorded in any positive code of the law of 
nations ; it was not displayed in the elementary works of the 
civilian ; nor had it ever been exemplified in the maritime usages 
of any other country, in any other age. In truth, it was the 
offspring of the municipal law of Great Britain alone ; equally 
operative in a time of peace, and in a time of war ; and, under 
all circumstances, inflicting a coercive jurisdiction upon the com- 
merce and navigation of the world. 

" For the legitimate rights of the belligerent powers, the United 
States had felt and evinced a sincere and open respect. Although 
they had marked a diversity of doctrine among the most cele- 
brated jurists, upon many of the litigated points of the law of 
war; although they had formerly espoused, with the example of 
the most powerful government of Europe, the principles of the 
armed neutrality, which were established in the year 1780, upon 
the basis of the memorable declaration of the empress of all the 
Russias; and although the principles of that declaration have 
been incorporated into all their public treaties, except in the 
instance of the treaty of 1794 ; yet, the United States, still faith- 

1 Opinion of Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, enclosing the plan of a treaty, 
dated the 3d of May, 1800, and the opinion of Mr. Wolcott, Secretary of the 
Treasury, dated the 14th of April, 1800. 

2 Opinion of Mr. Stoddert, Secretary of the Navy, dated the 23d of April, 
1800, and the opinions of Mr. Lee, Attorney-General, dated the 26th of Febru- 
ary, and the 30th of April, 1800. 



24 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

ful to the pacific and impartial policy which they professed, did 
not hesitate, even at the commencement of the French revolu- 
tionary war, to accept and allow the exposition of the law of 
nations, as it was then maintained by Great Britain ; and, con- 
sequently, to admit, upon a much contested point, that the pro- 
perty of her enemy, in their vessels, might be lawfully captured 
as prize of war. 1 It was also freely admitted that a belligerent 
power had a right, with proper cautions, to enter and search 
American vessels, for the goods of an enemy, and for articles 
contraband of war ; that if, upon a search, such goods or articles 
were found, or if, in the course of the search, persons in the mili- 
tary service of the enemy were discovered, a belligerent had a 
right of transhipment and removal ; that a belligerent had a right- 
in doubtful cases, to carry American vessels to a convenient sta- 
tion for further examination ; and that a belligerent had a right 
to exclude American vessels from ports and places, under the 
blockade of an adequate naval force. These rights the law of 
nations might, reasonably, be deemed to sanction ; nor has a fair 
exercise of the powers necessary for the enjoyment of these 
rights, been, at any time, controverted or opposed by the Ameri- 
can government. 

" But it must be again remarked, that the claim of Great Britain 
was not to be satisfied, by the most ample and explicit recognition 
of the law of war ; for, the law of war treats only of the relations 
of a belligerent to his enemy ; while the claim of Great Britain 
embraced, also, the relation between a sovereign and his subjects. 
It was said, that every British subject was bound by a tie of 
allegiance to his sovereign, which no lapse of time, no change of 
place, no exigency of life, could possibly weaken or dissolve. It 
was said, that the British sovereign was entitled, at all periods, 
and on all occasions, to the services of his subjects. And it was 
said, that the British vessels of war upon the high seas, might 
lawfully and forcibly enter the merchant vessels of every other 
nation (for the theory of these pretensions is not limited to the 
case of the United States, although that case has been, almost 

1 Correspondence of the year 1792, between Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State. 
and the ministers of Great Britain and France. Also, Mr. Jefferson's letter to 
the American minister at Paris, of the same year, requesting the recall of Mr. 
Genet. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 25 

exclusively, affected by their practical operation) for the purpose 
of discovering and impressing British subjects." 1 

"The injustice of the British claim, and the cruelty of the 
British practice, have tested, for a series of years, the pride and 
the patience of the American government : but, still, every ex- 
periment was anxiously made, to avoid the last resort of nations. 
The claim of Great Britain, in its theory, was limited to the right 
of seeking and impressing its own subjects, on board of the mer- 
chant vessels of the United States, although, in fatal experience, 
it has been extended (as already appears) to the seizure of the 
subjects of every other power, sailing under a voluntary contract 
with the American merchant; to the seizure of the naturalized 
citizens of the United States, sailing, also, under voluntary con- 
tracts, which every foreigner, independent of any act of naturali- 
zation, is at liberty to form in every country ; and even to the 
seizure of the native citizens of the United States, sailing on 
board the ships of their own nation, in the prosecution of a law- 
ful commerce. The excuse, for what has been unfeelingly 
termed, 'partial mistakes, and occasional abuse,' 2 when the 
right of impressment was practised towards vessels of the United 
States, is, in the words of the prince regent's declaration, ' a simi- 
larity of language and manners :' but was it not known, when 
this excuse was offered to the world, that the Russian, the Swede, 
the Dane and the German; that the Frenchman, the Spaniard, 
and the Portuguese ; nay, that the African and the Asiatic ; be- 
tween whom and the people of Great Britain there exists no 
similarity of language, manners, or complexion ; had been, 
equally with the American citizen and the British subject, the 
victims of the impress tyranny ? 3 If, however, the excuse be 
sincere ; if the real object of the impressment be merely to secure 
to Great Britain the naval services of her own subjects, and not 
to man her fleets, in every practicable mode of enlistment, by 
right, or by wrong; and if a just and generous government, pro- 
fessing mutual friendship and respect, may be presumed to prefer 
the accomplishment, even of a legitimate purpose, by means the 

1 British declaration of the 10th of January, 1813. 

* British declaration of the 10th of January, 1813. 

3 Letter of Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, to Mr. King, minister at London. 
of the 26th of October, 1796; and the letter of Mr. Marshall, Secretary of State, 
to Mr. King, of the 20th of September, 1800. 
VOL. I. — 3 



26 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

least afflicting and injurious to others, why have the overtures of 
the United States, offering other means as effectual as impress- 
ment, for the purpose avowed, to the consideration and accept- 
ance of Great Britain, been forever eluded or rejected ? It has 
been offered, that the number of men to be protected by an 
American vessel, should be limited by her tonnage ; that British 
officers should be permitted, in British ports, to enter the vessel, 
in order to ascertain the number of men on board ; and that, in 
case of an addition to her crew, the British subjects enlisted 
should be liable to impressment. 1 It was offered in the solemn 
form of a law, that American seamen should be registered ; that 
they should be provided with certificates of citizenship f and 
that the roll of the crew of every vessel should be formally au- 
thenticated. 3 It was offered, that no refuge or protection should 
be given to deserters; but that, on the contrary, they should be 
surrendered. 4 It was ' again and again offered to concur in a 
convention, which it was thought practicable to be formed, and 
which should settle the questions of impressment, in a manner 
that would be safe for England, and satisfactory to the United 
States.' 5 It was offered, that each party should prohibit its citi- 
zens or subjects from clandestinely concealing or carrying away, 
from the territories or colonies of the other, any seaman belong- 
ing to the other party. 6 And, conclusively, it has been offered 
and declared by law, that ' after the termination of the present 
war, it should not be lawful to employ on board of any of the 
public or private vessels of the United States, any persons except 
citizens of the United States ; and that no foreigner should be 
admitted to become a citizen hereafter, who had not, for the con- 
tinued term of five years, resided within the United States, with- 
out being, at any time, during the five years, out of the territory 
of the United States.' " 7 

1 Letter of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, to Mr. Pinkney, minister at Lon- 
don, dated the 11th of June, 1792, and the letter of Mr. Pickering, Secretary of 
State, to Mr. King, minister at London, dated the 8th of June, 1796. 

2 Act of Congress, passed the 28th of May, 1796. 

3 Letter of Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, to Mr. King, minister at London, 
dated the 8th of June, 1796. 

4 Project of a treaty on the subject, between Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, 
and Mr. Liston, the British minister, at Philadelphia, in the year 1800. 

5 Letter of Mr. King, minister at London, to the Secretary of State, dated the 15th 
of March, 1799. 

6 Letter of Mr. King to the Secretary of State, dated in July, 1803. 
' Act of Congress, passed on the 3d of March, 1813. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 27 

" But Great Britain has, unhappily, perceived in the accept- 
ance of the overtures of the American government, consequences 
injurious to her maritime policy ; and, therefore, withholds it, at 
the expense of her justice. She perceives, perhaps, a loss of the 
American nursery for her seamen, while she is at peace ; a loss 
of the service of American crews, while she is at war ; and a loss 
of many of those opportunities, which have enabled her to enrich 
her navy by the spoils of the American commerce, without 
exposing her own commerce to the risk of retaliation or repri- 
sals." 

" The present review of the conduct of the United States to- 
wards the belligerent powers of Europe, will be regarded by 
every candid mind, as a necessary medium to vindicate their na- 
tional character from the unmerited imputations of the prince 
regent's declaration of the 10th of January, 1813 ; and not as a 
medium, voluntarily assumed, according to the insinuations of 
that declaration, for the revival of unworthy prejudices, or vin- 
dictive passions, in reference to transaciions that are past. The 
treaty of Amiens, which seemed to terminate the war in Europe, 
seemed, also, to terminate the neutral sufferings of America ; but 
the hope of repose was, in both respects, delusive and transient. 
The hostilities which were renewed between Great Britain and 
France, in the year 1803, were immediately followed by a re- 
newal of the aggressions of the belligerent powers, upon the com- 
mercial rights and political independence of the United States. 
There was scarcely, therefore, an interval separating the aggres- 
sions of the first war from the aggressions of the second war ; 
and although, in nature, the aggressions continued to be the 
same, in extent, they became incalculably more destructive. It 
will be seen, however, that the American government inflexibly 
maintained its neutral and pacific policy in every extremity of 
the latter trial, with the same good faith and forbearance, that, in 
the former trial, had distinguished its conduct; until it was com- 
pelled to choose, from the alternative of national degradation or 
national resistance. And if great Britain alone then became the 
object of the American declaration of war, it will be seen, that 
Great Britain alone had obstinately closed the door of amicable 
negotiation. 

" The American minister at London, anticipating the rupture 
between Great Britain and France, had obtained assurances from 



28 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

the British government, l that, in the event of war, the instruc- 
tions given to their naval officers should be drawn up with plain- 
ness and precision; and, in general, that the rights of belligerents 
should be exercised in moderation, and with due respect for 
those of neutrals.' 1 And in relation to the important subject of 
impressment, he had actually prepared for signature, with the 
assent of Lord Hawkesbury and Lord St. Vincent, a convention, 
to continue during five years, declaring that ' no seamen, nor 
seafaring person, should, upon the high seas, and without the 
jurisdiction of either party, be demanded or taken out of any ship 
or vessel, belonging to the citizens or subjects of one of the par- 
ties, by the public or private armed ships, or men-of-war, belong- 
ing to, or in the service of, the other party ; and that strict orders 
should be given for the due observance of the engagement.' 2 
This convention, which explicitly relinquished impressments from 
American vessels on the high seas, and to which the British 
ministers had, at first, agreed, Lord St. Vincent was desirous 
afterwards to modify, 'stating, that on further reflection, he was 
of opinion that the narrow seas should be expressly excepted, 
they having been, as his lordship remarked, immemorially con- 
sidered to be within the dominion of Great Britain.' The Ameri- 
can minister, however, ' having supposed, from the tenour of his 
conversations with Lord St. Vincent, that the doctrine of mare 
clausum would not be revived against the United States on this 
occasion, but that England would be content with the limited 
jurisdiction, or dominion, over the seas adjacent to her territories, 
which is assigned by the law of nations to other states, was dis- 
appointed, on receiving Lord St. Vincent's communication ; and 
chose rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the 
doctrine it proposed to establish." 3 But it was still some satis- 
faction to receive a formal declaration from the British govern- 
ment, communicated by its minister at Washington, after the 
recommencement of the war in Europe, which promised, in 
effect, to reinstate the practice of naval blockades, upon the prin- 
ciples of the law of nations; so that no blockade should be con- 
sidered as existing, ' unless in respect of particular ports, which 
might be actually invested ; and, then, that the vessels bound to 

' Letter of Mr. King to the Secretary of State, dated the 16th of May, 1803. 

2 Letter of Mr. King to the Secretary of State, dated July, 1803. 

3 Letter of Mr. King to the Secretary of State, dated July, 1803. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 29 

such ports should not be captured, unless they had previously- 
been warned not to enter them.' 1 

" All the precautions of the American government were, never- 
theless, ineffectual ; and the assurances of the British government 
were, in no instance, verified. The outrage of impressment was 
again, indiscriminately, perpetrated upon the crew of every 
American vessel, and on every sea. The enormity of blockades, 
established by an order in council, without a legitimate object, 
and maintained by an order in council, without the application 
of a competent force, was more and more developed. The rule, 
denominated 'the rule of the war of 1756,' was revived in an 
affected style of moderation, but in a spirit of more rigorous exe- 
cution. 2 The lives, the liberty, the fortunes and the happiness of 
the citizens of the United States, engaged in the pursuits of navi- 
gation and commerce, were once more subjected to the violence 
and cupidity of the British cruisers. And, in brief, so grievous, 
so intolerable, had the afflictions of the nation become, that the 
people, with one mind and one voice, called loudly upon their 
government for redress and protection ; 3 the Congress of the 
United States, participating in the feelings and resentments of the 
time, urged upon the executive magistrate the necessity of an 
immediate demand of reparation from Great Britain ; 4 while the 
same patriotic spirit, which had opposed British usurpation in 
1793, and encountered French hostility in 1798, was again 
pledged, in every variety of form, to the maintenance of the na- 
tional honour and independence, during the more arduous trial 
that arose in 1805." 

"It has been shown, that a treaty proposed, emphatically by 
the British minister resident in Philadelphia, 'as the means of 
drying up every source of complaint, and irritation, upon the 
head of impressment,' was 'deemed utterly inadmissible,' by the 
American government, because it did not sufficiently provide for 

1 Letter of Mr. Merry to the Secretary of State, dated the 12th of April, 1804, 
and the enclosed copy cf a letter from Mr. Nepean, the Secretary of the Admi- 
ralty, to Mr. Hammond, the British under Secretary of State for foreign affairs, 
dated January 5, 1804. 

2 Orders in council of the 24th of June, 1803, and the 17th of August, 1805. 

3 Memorials of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, &c, presented to 
Congress in the end of the year 1805, and the beginning of the year 1806. 

4 Resolutions of the Senate of the United States, of the 10th and 14th of Feb- 
ruary, 1806; and the resolution of the House of Representatives. 

3* 



30 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

that object. 1 It has, also, been shown, that another treaty, pro- 
posed by the American minister, at London, was laid aside, 
because the British government, while it was willing to relin- 
quish, expressly, impressments upon American vessels, on the 
high seas, insisted upon an exception, in reference to the narrow 
seas claimed as a part of the British dominion : and experience 
demonstrated, that, although the spoliations committed upon the 
American commerce, might admit of reparation, by the payment 
of a pecuniary equivalent ; yet, consulting the honour and the 
feelings of the nation, it was impossible to receive satisfaction 
for the cruelties of impressment, by any other means, than by 
an entire discontinuance of the practice. When, therefore, the 
envoys extraordinary were appointed in the year 1806 to nego- 
tiate with the British government, every authority was given 
for the purposes of conciliation ; nay, an act of Congress, prohibit- 
ing the importation of certain articles of British manufacture into 
the United States, was suspended, in proof of a friendly dispo- 
sition ; 2 but it was declared, that 'the suppression of impress- 
ment, and the definition of blockades, were absolutely indispens- 
able ;' and that, ' without a provision against impressments, no 
treaty should be concluded.' The American envoys, accordingly, 
took care to communicate to the British commissioners, the limita- 
tions of their powers. Influenced, at the same time, by a sincere 
desire to terminate the differences between the two nations; 
knowing the solicitude of their government, to relieve its sea- 
faring citizens from actual sufferance; listening with confidence 
to assurances and explanations of the British commissioners, in 
a sense favourable to their wishes ; and judging from a state of 
information, that gave no immediate cause to doubt the suffi- 
ciency of those assurances and explanations ; the envoys rather 
than terminate the negotiation without any arrangement, were 
willing to rely upon the efficacy of a substitute, for a positive 
article in the treaty, to be submitted to the consideration of their 
government, as this, according to the declaration of the Britisli 
commissioners, was the only arrangement they were permitted, 

1 Mr. Liston's letter to the Secretary of State, dated the 4th of February, 1800; 
and the letter of Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, to the President of the United 
States, dated the 20th of February, 1800. 

2 Act of Congress, passed the 18th of April, 1806; and the act suspending it, 
passed the 19th of December, 1806. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 31 

at that time, to propose or to allow. The substitute was pre- 
sented in the form of a note from the British commissioners to 
the American envoys, and contained a pledge, 'that instructions 
had been given, and should be repeated and enforced, for the 
observance of the greatest caution in the impressing of British 
seamen ; that the strictest care should be taken to preserve the 
citizens of the United States from any molestation or injury ; and 
that immediate and prompt redress should be afforded, upon any 
representation of injury sustained by them.' 1 

"Inasmuch, however, as the treaty contained no provision 
against impressment, and it was seen by the government, when 
the treaty was under consideration for ratification, that the pledge 
contained in the substitute was not complied with, but, on the 
contrary, that the impressments were continued with undimi- 
nished violence in the American seas, so long after the alleged 
date of the instructions, which were to arrest them ; that the 
practical inefflcacy of the substitute could not be doubted by the 
government here, the ratification of the treaty was necessarily 
declined; and it has since appeared, that after a change in the 
British ministry had taken place, it was declared by the secretary 
for foreign affairs, that no engagements were entered into, on the 
part of his majesty, as connected with the treaty, except such as 
appear upon the face of it. 2 

" The American government, however, with unabating solici- 
tude for peace, urged an immediate renewal of the negotiations 
on the basis of the abortive treaty, until this course was peremp- 
torily declared, by the British government, to be < wholly inad- 
missible.' 

" But, independent of the silence of the proposed treaty, upon 
the great topic of American complaint, and of the view which 
has been taken of the projected substitute, the cotemporaneous 
declaration of the British commissioners, delivered by the com- 
mand of their sovereign, and to which the American envoys 
refused to make themselves a party, or to give the slightest 
degree of sanction, was regarded by the American government 
as ample cause of rejection. In reference to the French decree, 
which had been issued at Berlin on the 21st of November, 1800, 

1 Note of the British commissioners, dated 8th of November, 1806. 

2 Mr. Canning's letter to the American envoys, dated 27th October, 1807. 

3 Same letter. 



32 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

it was declared, that if France should carry the threats of that 
decree into execution, and ' if neutral nations, contrary to all 
expectation, should acquiesce in such usurpations, his majesty 
might, probably, be compelled, however reluctantly, to retaliate, 
in his just defence, and to adopt, in regard to the commerce of 
neutral nations with his enemies, the same measures which those 
nations should have permitted to be enforced, against their com- 
merce with his subjects :' < that his majesty could not enter into 
the stipulations of the present treaty, without an explanation 
from the United States of their intentions, or a reservation on the 
part of his majesty, in the case above-mentioned, if it should 
ever occur ;' and < that, without a formal abandonment, or tacit 
relinquishment of the unjust pretensions of France ; or without 
such conduct and assurances upon the part of the United States, 
as should give security to his majesty, that they would not sub- 
mit to the French innovations in the established system of mari- 
time law, his majesty would not consider himself bound, by the 
present signature of his commissioners, to ratify the treaty, or 
precluded from adopting such measures as might seem necessary 
for counteracting the designs of the enemy.' 1 

" The reservation of a power to invalidate a solemn treaty at 
the pleasure of one of the parties, and the menace of inflicting 
punishment upon the United States for the offences of another 
nation, proved, in the event, a prelude to the scenes of violence 
which Great Britain was then about to display, and which it 
would have been improper for the American negotiators to anti- 
cipate. For, if a commentary were wanting to explain the real 
design of such conduct, it would be found in the fact, that within 
eight days from the date of the treaty, and before it was possible 
for the British government to have known the effect of the Ber- 
lin decree on the American government ; nay, even before the 
American government had itself heard of that decree, the de- 
struction of American commerce was commenced by the order 
in council of the 7th of January, 1S07, which announced, 'that 
no vessel should be permitted to trade from one port to another, 
both which ports should belong to, or be in possession of France 
or her allies: or should be so far under their control, as that 
British vessels might not trade freely thereat.' 2 

' Note of the British commissioners, dated the 31st of December, 1806. Also, 
the answer of Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney to that note. 
2 Order in council of January 7, 1807. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 33 

" During the whole period of this negotiation, which did not 
finally close until the British government declared, in the month 
of October, 1S07, that negotiation was no longer admissible, the 
course pursued by the British squadron, stationed more imme- 
diately on the American coast, was, in the extreme, vexatious, 
predatory and hostile. The territorial jurisdiction of the United 
States, extending, upon the principles of the law of nations, at 
least a league over the adjacent ocean, was totally disregarded 
and contemned. Vessels employed in the coasting trade, or in 
the business of the pilot and the fisherman, were objects of inces- 
sant violence ; their petty cargoes were plundered ; and some of 
their scanty crews were often either impressed or wounded, or 
killed by the force of British frigates. British ships of war 
hovered, in warlike display, upon the coast; blockaded the ports 
of the United States, so that no vessel could enter or depart in 
safety ; penetrated the bays and rivers, and even anchored in the 
harbours of the United States, to exercise a jurisdiction of impress- 
ment ; threatened the towns and villages with conflagration ; and 
wantonly discharged musketry, as well as cannon, upon the in- 
habitants of an open and unprotected country. The neutrality 
of the American territory was violated on every occasion ; and, 
at last, the American government was doomed to suffer the 
greatest indignity which could be offered to a sovereign and in- 
dependent nation, in the ever memorable attack of a British fifty 
gun ship, under the countenance of the British squadron, an- 
chored within the waters of the United States, upon the frigate 
Chesapeake, peaceably prosecuting a distant voyage. The Bri- 
tish government affected, from time to time, to disapprove and 
condemn these outrages ; but the officers who perpetrated them 
were generally applauded ; if tried, they were acquitted ; if re- 
moved from the American station, it was only to be promoted in 
another station ; and if atonement were offered, as in the flagrant 
instance of the frigate Chesapeake, the atonement was so ungra- 
cious in the manner, and so tardy in the result, as to betray the 
want of that conciliatory spirit which ought to have characterized 
it.' 1 

' Evidence of these facts reported to Congress in November, 1806. 

Documents respecting Captain Love, of the Driver; Capiain Whitby, of the 
Leander, &c. 

Correspondence respecting the frigate Chesapeake, with Mr. Canning, at 
London; with Mr. Rose, at Washington; with Mr. Erskine, at Washington, &c. 



34 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1S12. 

"But the American government, soothing the exasperated spirit 
of the people, by a proclamation which interdicted the entrance 
of all British armed vessels into the harbours and waters of the 
United States, 1 neither commenced hostilities against Great Bri- 
tain, nor sought a defensive alliance with France, nor relaxed in 
its firm, but conciliatory efforts, to enforce the claims of justice 
upon the honour of both nations. 

" The rival ambition of Great Britain and France, now, how- 
ever, approached the consummation, which, involving the de- 
struction of all neutral rights, upon an avowed principle of ac- 
tion, could not fail to render an actual state of war comparatively 
more safe and more prosperous than the imaginary state of peace 
to which neutrals were reduced. The just and impartial conduct 
of a neutral nation ceased to be its shield and its safeguard, when 
the conduct of the belligerent powers towards each other became 
the only criterion of the law of war. The wrong committed by 
one of the belligerent powers was thus made the signal for the 
perpetration of a greater wrong by the other ; and if the Ame- 
rican government complained to both powers, their answer, 
although it never denied the causes of complaint, invariably 
retorted an idle and offensive inquiry into the priority of their 
respective aggressions ; or each demanded a course of resistance 
against its antagonist, which was calculated to prostrate the 
American right of self-government, and to coerce the United 
States against their interest and their policy, into becoming an 
associate in the war. But the American government never did, 
and never can, admit that a belligerent power, ' in taking steps 
to restrain the violence of its enemy, and to retort upon them the 
evils of their own injustice,' 2 is entitled to disturb and to destroy 
the rights of a neutral power, as recognized and established by 
the law of nations. It was impossible, indeed, that the real 
features of the miscalled retaliatory system should be long masked 
from the world ; when Great Britain, even in her acts of pro- 
fessed retaliation, declared that France was unable to execute 
the hostile denunciations of her decrees ; 3 and when Great Bri- 
tain herself unblushingly entered into the same commerce with 
her enemy (through the medium of forgeries, perjuries and 
licenses), from which she had interdicted unoffending neutrals. 

1 Proclamation of the 2d of July, 1807. 

2 Orders in council of the 7th of January, 1807. 3 Ibid. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 35 

The pride of naval superiority, and the cravings of commercial 
monopoly, gave, after all, the impulse and direction to the coun- 
cils of the British cabinet ; while the vast, although visionary, 
projects of France, furnished occasions and pretexts for accom- 
plishing the objects of those councils. 

" The British minister, resident at Washington, in the year 
1S04, having distinctly recognized, in the name of his sovereign, 
the legitimate principles of blockade, the American government 
received, with some surprise and solicitude, the successive notifi- 
cations of the 9th of August, 1804, the Sth of April, 1806, and, 
more particularly, of the 16th of May, 1S06, announcing, by the 
last notification, 'a blockade of the coast, rivers, and ports, from 
the river Elbe to the port of Brest, both inclusive.' 1 In none of 
the notified instances of blockade, were the principles that had 
been recognized in 1804, adopted and pursued; and it will be 
recollected by all Europe, that neither at the time of the notifica- 
tion of the 16th of May, 1806, nor at the time of excepting the 
Elbe and Ems, from the operation of that notification, 2 nor at 
any time during the continuance of the French war, was there 
an adequate naval force actually applied by Great Britain, for 
the purpose of maintaining a blockade from the river Elbe to the 
port of Brest. It was, then, in the language of the day, <a mere 
paper blockade ;' a manifest infraction of the law of nations ; 
and an act of peculiar injustice to the United States, as the only 
neutral power against which it could practically operate. But 
whatever may have been the sense of the American government 
on the occasion, and whatever might be the disposition to avoid 
making this the ground of an open rupture with Great Britain, 
the case assumed a character of the highest interest, when, inde- 
pendent of its own injurious consequences, France, in the Berlin 
decree of the 21st of November, 1806, recited, as a chief cause 
for placing the British islands in a state of blockade, that Great 
Britain declares blockaded places before which she has not a 
single vessel of war ; and even places, which her united forces 
would be incapable of blockading; such as entire coasts, and a 
whole empire : an unequaled abuse of the right of blockade, 

1 Lord Harrowby's note to Mr. Monroe, dated the 9th of August, 1804; and 
Mr. Fox's notes to Mr. Monroe, dated respectively the Sth of April and the 16th 
of May, 1806. * 

2 Lord Howick's note to Mr. Monroe, dated the 25th of September, 1806. 



36 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

that had no other object than to interrupt the communications of 
different nations ; and to extend the commerce and industry of 
England upon the ruin of those nations.' 1 The American govern- 
ment aims not, and never has aimed, at the justification either of 
Great Britain or of France, in their career of crimination and 
recrimination; but it is of some importance to observe, that if 
the blockade of May, 1806, was an unlawful blockade, and if 
the right of retaliation arose with the first unlawful attack made 
by a belligerent power upon neutral rights, Great Britain has yet 
to answer to mankind, according to the rule of her own acknow- 
ledgment, for all the calamities of the retaliatory warfare. France, 
whether right or wrong, made the British system of blockade the 
foundation of the Berlin decree ; and France had an equal right 
with Great Britain to demand from the United States an opposi- 
tion to every encroachment upon the privileges of the neutral 
character. It is enough, however, on the present occasion, for 
the American government to observe, that it possessed no power 
to prevent the framing of the Berlin decree, and to disclaim any 
approbation of its principles, or acquiescence in its operations ; 
for, it neither belonged to Great Britain nor to France to pre- 
scribe to the American government the time, or the mode, or the 
degree, of resistance, to the indignities and the outrages with 
which each of those nations in its turn assailed the United States." 
" When the American government received intelligence that 
the o refers of the 11th of November, 1807, had been under the 
consideration of the British cabinet, and were actually prepared 
for promulgation, it was anticipated that France, in a zealous 
prosecution of the retaliatory warfare, would soon produce an 
act of at least equal injustice and hostility. The crisis existed, 
therefore, at which the United States were compelled to decide, 
either to withdraw their seafaring citizens, and their commercial 
wealth from the ocean, or to leave the interests of the mariner 
and the merchant exposed to certain destruction ; or to engage in 
open and active war for the protection and defence of those in- 
terests. The principles and the habits of the American govern- 
ment were still disposed to neutrality and peace. In weighing 
the nature and the amount of the aggressions which had been 
perpetrated, or which were threatened, if there were any pre- 
ponderance to determine the balance against one of the bellige- 
1 Berlin decree of the 21st of November, 1806. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 37 

rent powers rather than the other, as the object of a declaration 
of war, it was against Great Britain, at least, upon the vital in- 
terest of impressment, and the obvious superiority of her naval 
means of annoyance. The French decrees were, indeed, as 
obnoxious in their formation and design as the British orders ; 
but the government of France claimed and exercised no right of 
impressment; and the maritime spoliations of France were, com- 
paratively, restricted, not only by her own weakness on the ocean, 
but by the constant and pervading vigilance of the fleets of her 
enemy. The difficulty of selection, the indiscretion of encoun- 
tering, at once, both of the offending powers ; and, above all, the 
hope of an early return of justice, under the dispensations of the 
ancient public law, prevailed in the councils of the American 
government; and it was resolved to attempt the preservation of 
its neutrality and its peace, of its citizens and its resources, by a 
voluntary suspension of the commerce and navigation of the 
United States. It is true, that for the minor outrages committed 
under the pretext of the rule of war of 1756, the citizens of every 
denomination had demanded from their government, in the year 
1805, protection and redress; it is true, that for the unparalleled 
enormities of the year 1807, the citizens of every denomination 
again demanded from their government protection and redress; 
but it is, also, a truth, conclusively established by every mani- 
festation of the sense of the American people, as well as o^their 
government, that any honourable means of protection and redress 
were preferred to the last resort of arms. The American govern- 
ment might honourably retire, for a time, from the scene of con- 
flict and collision ; but it could no longer, with honour, permit its 
flag to be insulted, its citizens to be enslaved, and its property to 
be plundered on the highway of nations. 

" Under these impressions, the restrictive system of the United 
States was introduced. In December, 1807, an embargo was 
imposed upon all American vessels and merchandize, 1 on prin- 
ciples similar to those which originated and regulated the em- 
bargo law, authorized to be laid by the President of the United 
States, in the year 1794; but soon afterwards, in the genuine 
spirit of the policy that prescribed the measure, it was declared 
by law, ' that in the event of such peace, or suspension of hostili- 
ties between the belligerent powers of Europe, or such changes 

1 Act of Congress, passed the 22d of December, 1807. 
VOL. I. 4 



38 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

in their measures affecting neutral commerce, as might render 
that of the United States safe, in the judgment of the President 
of the United States, he was authorized to suspend the embargo, 
in whole or in part.' 1 The pressure of the embargo was thought, 
however, so severe upon every part of the community, that the 
American government, notwithstanding the neutral character of 
the measure, determined upon some relaxation ; and, accordingly, 
the embargo being raised, as to all other nations, a system of non- 
intercourse and non-importation was substituted in March, 1809, 
as to Great Britain and France, which prohibited all voyages to 
the British or French dominions, and all trade in articles of Bri- 
tish or French product or manufacture. 2 But still adhering to 
the neutral and pacific policy of the government, it was declared, 
1 that the President of the United States should be authorized, in 
case either France or Great Britain should so revoke or modify 
her edicts, as that they should cease to violate the neutral com- 
merce of the United States, to declare the same by proclamation, 
after which the trade of the United States might be renewed with 
the nation so doing.' 3 These appeals to the justice and the in- 
terests of the belligerent powers proving ineffectual, and the 
necessities of the country increasing, it was finally resolved by 
the American government to take the hazards of a war ; to re- 
voke its restrictive system, and to exclude British and French 
armed vessels from the harbours and waters of the United States; 
but, again, emphatically to announce, < that in case either Great 
Britain or France should, before the 3d of March, 181 1, so revoke 
or modify her edicts, as that they should cease to violate the 
neutral commerce of the United States ; and if the other nation 
should not, within three months thereafter, so revoke or modify 
her edicts, in like manner,' the provisions of the non-intercourse 
and non-importation law should, at the expiration of three 
months, be revived against the nation refusing, or neglecting to 
revoke or modify its edict." 4 

" On the expiration of three months from the date of the presi- 
dent's proclamation, the non-intercourse and non-importation law 
was, of course, to be revived against Great Britain, unless, during 

1 Act of Congress, passed the 22d of April, 1808. 

2 Act of Congress, passed the 1st of March, 1809. 

3 1 lth section of the last cited act of Congress 

4 Act of Congress, passed the 1st of May, 1810. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 39 

that period, her orders in council should be revoked. The sub- 
ject was, therefore, most anxiously and most steadily pressed 
upon the justice and the magnanimity of the British government; 
and even when the hope of success expired, by the lapse of the 
period prescribed in one act of Congress, the United States opened 
the door of reconciliation by another act, which, in the year 1811, 
again provided, that in case, at any time, ' Great Britain should 
so revoke or modify her edicts, as that they shall cease to violate 
the neutral commerce of the United States, the President of the 
United States should declare the fact by proclamation ; and that 
the restrictions, previously imposed, should, from the date of 
such proclamation, cease and be discontinued.' 1 But, unhappily, 
every appeal to the justice and magnanimity of Great Britain 
was now, as heretofore, fruitless and forlorn. She had, at this 
epoch, impressed from the crews of American merchant vessels, 
peaceably navigating the high seas, not less than six thousand ? 
mariners, who claimed to be citizens of the United States, and 
who were denied all opportunity to verify their claims. She had' 
seized and confiscated the commercial property of American citi- 
zens to an incalculable amount. She had United in the enormi- 
ties of France to declare a great proportion of the terraqueous 
globe in a state of blockade ; chasing the American merchant flag 
effectually from the ocean. She had contemptuously disregarded 
the neutrality of the American territory, and the jurisdiction of 
the American laws, within the waters and harbours of the United 
States. She was enjoying the emoluments of a surreptitious 
trade, stained with every species of fraud and corruption, which 
gave to the belligerent powers the advantages of peace, while 
the neutral powers were involved in the evils of war. She had, 
in short, usurped and exercised on the water, a tyranny similar 
to that which her great antagonist had usurped and exercised 
upon the land. And, amidst all these proofs of ambition and 
avarice, she demanded that the victims of her usurpations and 
her violence should revere her as the sole defender of the rights 
and liberties of mankind. 

" When, therefore, Great Britain, in manifest violation of her 

solemn promises, refused to follow the example of France, by 

the repeal of her orders in council, the American government 

was compelled to contemplate a resort to arms, as the only re- 

1 Act of Congress, passed the 2d of March, 1811. 






40 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

maining course to be pursued for its honour, its independence, 
and its safety. Whatever depended upon the United States 
themselves, the United States had performed, for the preserva- 
tion of peace, in resistance of the French decrees as well as of the 
British orders. What had been required from France, in its 
relation to the neutral character of the United States, France had 
performed, by the revocation of its Berlin and Milan decrees. 
But what depended upon Great Britain, for the purposes of jus- 
tice, in the repeal of her orders in council, was withheld ; and 
new evasions were sought when the old were exhausted. It 
was, at one time, alleged, that satisfactory proof was not afforded 
that France had repealed her decrees against the commerce of 
the United States, as if such proof alone were wanting to ensure 
the performance of the British promise. 1 At another time it was 
insisted that the repeal of the French decrees in their operation 
against the United States, in order to authorize a demand for the 
performance of the British promise, must be total, applying 
equally to their internal and their external effects ; as if the 
United States had either the right or the power to impose upon 
France the law of her domestic institutions. 2 And it was finally 
insisted, in a dispatch from Lord Castlereagh to the British 
minister, residing at Washington, in the year 1812, which was 
officially communicated to the American government, ' that the 
decrees of Berlin and Milan must not be repealed singly and 
specially, in relation to the United States ; but must be repealed, 
also, as to all other neutral nations ; and that in no less extent of 
a repeal of the French decrees, had the British government ever 
pledged itself to repeal the orders in council ;' 3 as if it were incum- 
bent on the United States not only to assert her own rights, but 
to become the coadjutor of the British government, in a gratui- 
tous assertion of the rights of all other nations. 

" The Congress of the United States could pause no longer. 
Under a deep and afflicting sense of the national wrongs and the 
national resentments, while they ' postponed definitive measures 
with respect to France, in the expectation that the result of un- 
closed discussions between the American minister at Paris and 

1 Correspondence between Mr. Pinkney and the British government. 

2 Letters of Mr. Erskine. 

3 Correspondence between the Secretary of State, and Mr. Foster, the British 
minister, in June, 1812. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 41 

the French government, would speedily enable them to decide, 
with greater advantage, on the course due to the rights, the in- 
terests, and the honour of the country,' 1 they pronounced a de- 
liberate and solemn declaration of war, between Great Britain 
and the United States, on the 18th of June, 1812. 

" But, it is in the face of all the facts which have been displayed 
in the present narrative, that the prince regent, by his declaration 
of January, 1813, describes the United States as the aggressor in 
the war. If the act of declaring war constitutes, in all cases, the 
act of original aggression, the United States must submit to the 
severity of the reproach ; but if the act of declaring war may be 
more truly considered as the result of long suffering and neces- 
sary self-defence, the American government will stand acquitted, 
in the sight of Heaven, and of the world. Have the United States, 
then, enslaved the subjects, confiscated the property, prostrated 
the commerce, insulted the flag, or violated the territorial sove- 
reignty of Great Britain ? No ; but, in all these respects the 
United States had suffered for a long period of years, previously 
to the declaration of war, the contumely and outrage of the British 
government. It has been said, too, as an aggravation of the 
imputed aggression, that the United States chose a period for 
their declaration of war when Great Britain was struggling for 
her own existence, against a power which threatened to over- 
throw the independence of all Europe ; but it might be more 
truly said, that the United States, not acting upon choice, but 
upon compulsion, delayed the declaration of war, until the per- 
secutions of Great Britain had rendered further delay destructive 
and disgraceful. Great Britain had converted the commercial 
scenes of American opulence and prosperity into scenes of com- 
parative poverty and distress; she had brought the existence of 
the United States, as an independent nation, into question ; and, 
surely, it must have been indifferent to the United States, whether 
they ceased to exist as an independent nation, by her conduct, 
while she professed friendship, or by her conduct, when she 
avowed enmity and revenge. Nor is it true that the existence 
of Great Britain was in danger at the epoch of the declaration of 
war. The American government uniformly entertained an op- 
posite opinion ; and, at all times, saw more to apprehend for the 

'President's message of the 1st of June, 1812; and the report of the com- 
mittee of foreign relations, to whom the message was referred. 

4* 



42 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

United States, from her maritime power, than from the territorial 
power of her enemy. The event has justified the opinion and 
the apprehension. But, what the United States asked, as essential 
to their welfare, and even as beneficial to the allies of Great 
Britain, in the European war, Great Britain, it is manifest, might 
have granted, without impairing the resources of her own strength 
or the splendour of her own sovereignty ; for, her orders in coun- 
cil have been since revoked ; not, it is true, as the performance 
of her promise, to follow, in this respect, the example of France, 
since she finally rested the obligation of that promise upon a 
repeal of the French decrees, as to all nations ; and the repeal 
was only as to the United States ; nor as an act of national jus- 
tice towards the United States ; but, simply, as an act of domestic 
policy, for the special advantage of her own people. 

"The British government has, also, described the war as a 
war of aggrandizement and conquest, on the part of the United 
States ; but, where is the foundation for the charge ? While the 
American government employed every means to dissuade the 
Indians, even those who lived within the territory, and were sup- 
plied by the bounty of the United States, from taking any part in 
the war, 1 the proofs were irresistible, that the enemy pursued a 
very different course f and that every precaution would be neces- 
sary to prevent the effects of an offensive alliance between the 
British troops and the savages, throughout the northern frontier 
of the United States. The military occupation of Upper Canada 
was, therefore, deemed indispensable to the safety of that frontier 
in the earliest movements of the war, independent of all views of 
extending the territorial boundary of the United States. But, 
when war was declared, in resentment for injuries, which had 
been suffered upon the Atlantic, what principle of public law, 
what modification of civilized warfare, imposed upon the United 
States the duty of abstaining from the invasion of the Canadas? 
It was there alone that the United States could place themselves 
upon an equal footing of military force with Great Britain ; and 
it was there, that they might reasonably encourage the hope of 
being able, in the prosecution of a lawful retaliation, ' to restrain 

1 Proceedings at the councils, held with the Indians, during the expedition 
under Brigadier General Hull ; and the talk delivered by the President of the 
United States to the Six Nations, at Washington, on the 8th of April, 1813. 

2 Documents laid before Congress on the 13lh of June, 1812. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 43 

the violence of the enemy, and to retort upon him the evils of 
his own injustice.' The proclamations issued by the American 
commanders, on entering Upper Canada, have, however, been 
adduced by the British negotiators at Ghent, as the proofs of a 
spirit of ambition and aggrandizement on the part of their govern- 
ment. In truth, the proclamations were not only unauthorized 
and disapproved, but were infractions of the positive instructions 
which had been given for the conduct of the war in Canada. 
When the general, commanding the north-western army of the 
United States, received, on the 24th of June, 1812, his first au- 
thority to commence offensive operations, he was especially told, 
that ' he must not consider himself authorized to pledge the 
government to the inhabitants of Canada, further than assurances 
of protection in their persons, property, and rights.' And on the 
ensuing 1st of August, it was emphatically declared to him, 'that 
it had become necessary that he should not lose sight of the in- 
structions of the 24th of June, as any pledge beyond that was 
incompatible with the views of the government.' 1 Such was the 
nature of the charge of American ambition and aggrandizement, 
and such the evidence to support it." 

" The conduct of the United States, from the moment of de- 
claring the war, will serve, as well as their previous conduct, 
to rescue them from the unjust reproaches of Great Britain. 
When war was declared, the orders in council had been main- 
tained, with inexorable hostility, until a thousand American ves- 
sels and their cargoes had been seized and confiscated, under 
their operation ; the British minister at Washington had, with 
peculiar solemnity, announced that the orders would not be re- 
pealed, but upon conditions, which the American government 
had not the right, nor the power, to fulfil ; and the European 
war, which had raged with little intermission for twenty years, 
threatened an indefinite continuance. Under these circumstances, 
a repeal of the orders, and a cessation of the injuries which they 
produced, were events beyond all rational anticipation. It ap- 
pears, however, that the orders, under the influence of a parlia- 
mentary inquiry into their effects upon the trade and manufac- 
tures of Great Britain, were provisionally repealed on the 23d of 
June, 1812, a few days subsequent to the American declaration 

1 Letter from the Secretary of the War Department to Brigadier General Hull, 
dated the 24th of June, and the 1st of August, 1812. 



44 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

of war. If this repeal had been made known to the United 
States, before their resort to arms, the repeal would have arrested 
it ; and that cause of war being removed, the other essential 
cause, the practice of impressment, would have been the subject 
of renewed negotiation, under the auspicious influence of a par- 
tial, yet important, act of reconciliation. But the declaration of 
war, having announced the practice of impressment, as a princi- 
pal cause, peace could only be the result of an express abandon- 
ment of the practice ; of a suspension of the practice, for the 
purposes of negotiation ; or of a cessation of actual sufferance, 
in consequence of a pacification in Europe, which would deprive 
Great Britain of every motive for continuing the practice." 

" The reluctance with which the United States had resorted to 
arms, was manifested by the steps taken to arrest the progress 
of hostilities, and to hasten a restoration of peace. On the 26th 
of June, 1812, the American charge d'affaires, at London, was 
instructed to make the proposal of an armistice to the British 
government, which might lead to an adjustment of all differ- 
ences, on the single condition, in the event of the orders in coun- 
cil being repealed, that instructions should be issued, suspending 
the practice of impressment during the armistice. This proposal 
was soon followed by another, admitting, instead of positive in- 
structions, an informal understanding between the two govern- 
ments on the subject. 1 But both of these proposals were unhap- 
pily rejected. 2 And when a third, which seemed to leave no 
plea for hesitation, as it required no other preliminary than that 
the American minister, at London, should find in the British 
government a sincere disposition to accommodate the difference 
relative to impressment, on fair conditions, was evaded, it was 
obvious that neither a desire of peace nor a spirit of conciliation 
influenced the councils of Great Britain. 

"Under these circumstances, the American government had 
no choice, but to invigorate the war ; and yet it has never lost 
sight of the object of all just wars, a just peace. The Emperor of 
Russia having offered his mediation to accomplish that object, it 

' Letters from the Secretary of State to Mr. Russell, dated the 26th of June, 
and 27th of July, 1812. 

2 Correspondence between Mr. Russell and Lord Castlereagh, dated August 
and September, 1812; and Mr. Russell's letters to the Secretary of State, dated 
September, 1812. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 18 12. 45 

was instantly and cordially accepted by the American govern- 
ment j 1 but it was peremptorily rejected by the British govern- 
ment. The emperor, in his benevolence, repeated his invitation : 
the British government again rejected it. At last, however, Great 
Britain, sensible of the reproach to which such conduct would 
expose her throughout Europe, offered to the American govern- 
ment a direct negotiation for peace, and the offer was promptly 
embraced, with perfect confidence that the British government 
would be equally prompt in giving effect to its own proposal. 
But such was not the design or the course of that government. 
The American envoys were immediately appointed, and arrived 
at Gottenburgh, the destined scene of negotiation, on the 11th of 
April, 1S14, as soon as the season admitted. The British govern- 
ment, though regularly informed that no time would be lost on 
the part of the United States, suspended the appointment of its 
envoys until the actual arrival of the American envoys should be 
formally communicated. This pretension, however novel and 
inauspicious, was not permitted to obstruct the path to peace. 
The British government next proposed to transfer the negotiation 
from Gottenburgh to Ghent. This change, also, notwithstanding 
the necessary delay, was allowed. The American envoys, ar- 
riving at Ghent on the 24th of June, remained in a mortifying 
state of suspense and expectation for the arrival of the British 
envoys until the 6th of August. And from the period of opening 
the negotiations to the date of the last dispatch of the 31st of 
October, it has been seen that the whole of the diplomatic skill 
of the British government has consisted in consuming time, with- 
out approaching any conclusion. The pacification of Paris had, 
suddenly and unexpectedly, placed at the disposal of the British 
government a great naval and military force ; the pride and pas- 
sions of the nation were artfully excited against the United States, 
and a war of desperate and barbarous character was planned, at 
the very moment that the American government, finding its 
maritime citizens relieved, by the course of events, from actual 
sufferance under the practice of impressment, had authorized its 
envoys to waive those stipulations upon the subject, which might, 
otherwise, have been indispensable precautions." 

Little need or can be added to Dallas' authentic and persuasive 
view of the justice of the war. It is of great importance to 
1 Correspondence between Mr. Monroe and Mr. Daschkoff, in March, 1813. 



46 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

imbue the American nation, and impress others, with just ideas 
of the course vindicated in arms by a comparatively weak 
American against the most powerful European nation ; and to 
convince all that they were not resorted to till expostulation 
and forbearance were exhausted. Stung, outraged, and roused 
to conflict by uninterrupted series of insufferable wrongs and 
contumelious defiance, the pride and fortitude of a patient people 
were provoked and confirmed. Many think that Great Britain 
always hankered after the recolonization of the United States. 
Not content with its commercial accomplishment, by which this 
country free is more profitable to that than it could be as colonies, 
the mother country, by various insidious devices, as some be- 
lieve, was contriving to resume at least metropolitan supremacy. 
Detention of the frontier posts long after the peace of 17S3, in 
flagrant violation of the treaty, and contempt of remonstrance by 
Washington, may have been with the design to confine the 
American States to the east side of the Ohio river. While the 
savages on the west were carefully kept in British subjection, 
Indian sales of lands to the American government or settlers 
might be easily invalidated by reason of their roving ownership 
giving no title by occupancy or cultivation ; and thus the whole 
western wilds retained by or for the English. On the maritime 
side England had complete mastery by sea. With both flanks 
so controlled, the States deprived of lands beyond the Ohio, and 
trade upon the ocean, environed by British fortifications on all 
sides, and overwhelmed by British sway, would perhaps seek 
again British protection. The attempt at Ghent to negotiate 
Indian sovereignty within the States, looks like furtherance of 
the original intent. The attack of New Orleans, the key of the 
West, in the midst of the negotiations at Ghent, the legality of 
the American acquisition of Louisiana from France being denied 
in the English manifesto when attacking New Orleans, with open 
communication to sea, and indisputable command of all the rivers, 
lakes, and bays of the south-west, controlling the whole valley 
of the Mississippi, viewed in connection with prior designs upon 
the United States through northern divisions, all combine to 
infer that before and during the war, and until the peace of 1815, 
England had not relinquished hopes of extensive control over 
large parts of this country. Its growth in population, resources, 
national power and national pride since the peace of 1815 would 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 47 

not allow now endurance for a moment of any one of the many- 
acts of injustice then borne for several years. A swamp in Oregon, 
a port in California, a point of honour, may now produce a war, 
which till both nations ascertained that the United States both can 
and will declare and prosecute it if necessary, was altogether dis- 
credited by the English, discouraged and dreaded by many of 
the most respectable and intelligent Americans. 

Opposition to it comprehended most of the merchants for 
whose relief and at whose instance it was made, their dependents, 
the lawyers of the seaports, the traders and mechanics connected 
with navigation. Jefferson's restrictive system, embargo, non- 
importation, non-intercourse, fell with severe force on Eastern 
navigating interests, and soured that intolerant population. Their 
clergy, the champions of war against England in 1775, were 
bitter and uncompromising opponents of it in 1812. Party, 
the police of republics, and protection of minorities from the 
oppression and proscription of majorities, in this country, if not 
others, involves the church in excesses, which, like all extremes, 
however to be deprecated, cannot be avoided, and, if moderated, 
should not be stifled. That venerable patriarch of Eastern fede- 
ralism, John Adams, as soon as war was declared, rebuked oppo- 
sition to it by persons in authority, as he said, ecclesiastical and 
civil, and political and military, denouncing it as unjust, unneces- 
sary and unexpected. " It is utterly incomprehensible to me," 
said Mr. Adams, " that a rational, a social or a moral creature 
can say the war is unjust ; how it can be said to be unnecessary 
is very mysterious. I have thought it both just and necessary 
for five or six years. 

"How can it be said to be unexpected is another wonder. I 
have expected it more than five and twenty years, and have had 
great reason to be thankful that it has been postponed so long. 1 
saw such a spirit in the British Islands, when I resided in France, 
in Holland, and in England itself, that I expected another war 
much sooner than it has happened. I was so impressed with the 
idea, that I expressed to Lord Lansdowne (formerly Lord Shel- 
burne) an apprehension that his lordship would live long enough 
to be obliged to make, and that I should live long enough to 
see, another peace made between Great Britain and the United 
States of America. His lordship did not live long enough to 
make the peace, and I shall not probably live to see it ; but I 



48 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

have lived to see the war that must be followed by a peace, if 
the war is not eternal." 

The East, commercial and navigating, for whose vindication 
the war was undertaken, opposed it: Massachusetts, then includ- 
ing Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, with 
a large part of New York, and the majority of New Jersey. 
The West and South, with nothing but principles to fight for, 
together with the large Central States, Virginia and Pennsylvania, 
supported it. Vermont, a frontier state, was the only one of 
New England for the war. As the most violent and influential 
moral resistance to it came from the Eastern clergy, a view of that 
curious offspring of freedom, the American church, is one of the 
first points for philosophical attention. Not the Church of England 
or of Rome, the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, or any other 
particular sect of Christian worship, but the whole, in all their 
many varieties and modifications, as developed by American insti- 
tutions and influences, and combined in what may be denominated 
the American church, or the voluntary religion of the United 
States. The political influences of this church are felt every day 
throughout this country; its action upon the war of 1812 is 
among the most striking and memorable of its circumstances. 

European misconception or misrepresentation disparages Ame- 
rican religion, as formerly they did men and animals, and still do 
government and society. Liberty is always accused by hierar- 
chies of infidelity and immorality: want of ecclesiastical rectitude 
being inferred from want of political power. Such was the Pagan 
and is the Mahometan dogma; and until exploded by American 
devotion, it was a Christian doctrine. Similar contempt of arbi- 
trary for self-government maligns republicanism; to which dispa- 
ragements of the religion and politics of America the Old World 
superadds that of American descent said to be bastardized by 
ancestral crime. Yet the origin of the United States of America 
was more ideal, identical, primordial and pious than that of any 
European nation. Emigrants from various countries sought 
America from sympathetic motives, and even their colonial settle- 
ments were not merely accidental or their governments convul- 
sive, as most other nations have originated, but were of one mind. 
Political and religious freedom was their pervading impulse. 
Jesuits, Puritans, Quakers, Huguenots, Calvinists, they were all 
missionaries, and many of them martyrs, fugitives for conscience, 



CHAP. L] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 49 

not crime. Bringing the free thoughts just beginning in Europe, 
the Bible was the code of many, Christianity the common law of 
all : when French and English colonists were led to war against 
each other, their religious and political predilections continued still 
the same, notwithstanding hostilities. 

Less mixed than the many-peopled origin of most old nations, 
American extemporized beginning was less accidental, national 
fusion more complete, lineage more homogeneous. Similarity 
of language, much more perfect throughout all the United States 
of America than in any other nation, is not a more effectual 
amalgamation than unity of religious and political sympathy. 
The populace of Europe are beneath American comparison. The 
most exclusive nobility, with often fabricated pedigrees, rarely 
pretend to date beyond American settlement. The boasted blue 
blood of aristocracy marks no national identity or individual 
character beyond the plebeian articulation of America: upstart, 
but by one impulse of self-government, from first to last in un- 
broken tradition. From embryo to adult there has been no 
change since creation. Religion and politics have been peculiar, 
constant and national. Instinct with devotional and polemical 
fervour American religion passed through the successive stages 
from ecclesiastical domination to toleration, and from that to 
divorce of church and state, till the dominion of religious liberty 
has become more potent than that of absolute hierarchy, and reli- 
gion seems destined to greater supremacy than where church and 
state are united. Political independence and union were medi- 
tated by the American colonies two-thirds of a century before 
they were declared and established. Voluntary religion, always 
progressive with civil liberty, was in the grain of American in- 
stitutions before its incorporation with the federal and state con- 
stitutions of the United States. All these constitutions, unlike 
those of old, were long premeditated. Religious freedom preceded 
the Revolution. The Church of England was the established 
church, but tithes and glebes were hardly known. While nearly 
the whole of a vast scarcely inhabited country was part of the 
see of London, church democracy was working its independence 
of all the old jurisdictions. In that respect so little cause of com- 
plaint existed that the Declaration of Independence, in its cata- 
logue of grievances, mentions no religious abuse. No Unitarian 
scruple prevented Franklin and Adams from signing the denui- 
vol. i. — 5 



50 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

tive treaty of peace with Great Britain, in the name of the most 
holy ar.d undivided Trinity, nor did repugnance to slavery forbid 
Jay, together with them, subscribing the English stipulation that 
negroes are property. The Articles of Confederation bound the 
states to assist each other against all attacks upon any of them 
on account of religion. But the last line of the federal constitu- 
tion merely declares that no religious test shall ever be required as 
a qualification for any office or public trust ; to which sparing salvo 
the first amendment adds, that Congress shall make no law re- 
specting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof. The state constitutions, more appropriate re- 
positories of such provisions, abound with interdicts of all con- 
nection between church and state and protections for the rights 
of conscience. 

Christianity is claimed throughout the United States as the 
religion of self-government, the appropriate faith of republican- 
ism. Spontaneity produces ecclesiastical establishments of all 
kinds, and pastoral influences at least as numerous and effec- 
tual as wherever religion is part of politics. Toleration is an 
American reality ; mere sufferance is unknown. States, society, 
seminaries of education, families experience no annoyance from 
variety of creeds. Most of the education proceeds from cler- 
gymen : and with equal acceptance whether the teacher be a 
Presbyterian, a Jesuit, or a Quaker. The teacher's merit is that 
he is qualified to teach, not that he is of any particular creed. 
The extensive school system, begun in New England and ex- 
tending everywhere, fortifies clerical authority by uniting the 
power of knowledge to the strongest of feelings. Religious 
principle, thus strengthened by toleration, political separation of 
church from state, has had the further unlooked-for result of 
aggrandizing the church by irresistible influence, beyond that of 
political government. So intense is religious feeling that political 
rights are even rejected by some because Christianity is not ac- 
knowledged by the constitution. It is inseparably connected with 
the whole frame of society. American separation of church from 
state binds them more closely than ever. Religion is the essence 
of governing, though government be dissevered from it. Its 
American authority exceeds that of American political govern- 
ment. As government forbears, religion interposes and becomes 
the cement of the community. Divorcing church from state, 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 51 

while it annuls compulsive obedience and support, substitutes the 
stronger tie of voluntary attachment, often enthusiastic. It is 
only necessary to observe how the Sabbath day is kept holy 
throughout the United States, to be sensible of the extensive, 
nearly universal predominance of church discipline. Free religion 
has raised up a predominant church, of all creeds, which rivals, 
if it does not regulate, the commonwealth. The American church 
is as well if not better organized than the state. It has its polity, 
its officers, its constituency, its numerous sects and controversies, 
but all moving together for religious supremacy. It is a dynasty 
of more unity, perhaps perpetuity, than the state. Religious 
associations, charitable and beneficial institutions, combine masses 
of intelligence, wealth, zeal, all the elements of union, activity and 
control. While young democracy was gradually growing up, an 
independent church, like an independent currency, at the same 
time started forward, and the two latter have become able, either 
one, to regulate the former. Each has its free press, its intellec- 
tual and lucrative support, its numerous and devoted followers. 
The church has more seminaries of learning than the state, more 
constant, ardent and able advocates; its offices are mostly filled 
by educated men ; there is no rotation in office among them; the 
incumbent is always so by life tenure; if he behaves well, from 
eighteen to eighty years of age his services, influence, and main- 
tenance do but increase. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is universal, 
active and uncontradicted, while that of the state is limited, for- 
bearing, timid and often frustrated. The state does not interfere i 
with the church: while the church is continually regulating the 
state. Religion in the United States is a vocation more attractive, 
absorbing and profitable than politics. The pecuniary contribu- 
tions in every way to ecclesiastical and its affiliated objects in 
the United States exceed many millions of dollars a year; pro- 
bably as much as an established state church would cost, per- 
haps as much as the federal government. Church missionary 
establishments, both foreign and domestic, are more extensive 
and expensive than any similar relations maintained by the 
federal government. Bible societies, temperance, abolition of 
slavery, and various other combinations, open, ardent, opulent, 
numerous, are constantly in energetic action. They rival, check, 
and control political government. Without further explanation 



52 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

of this interesting topic than is proper in connection with the 
subject in hand, enough has been said to show, as a fact, that 
clerical power always strong and strengthening, was accustomed 
to display itself especially in New England. There its ascend- 
ency was marked by fitful acts of signal intolerance. Probably 
as many were tortured and executed, in proportion to population, 
for imputed and absurd heresies there, as suffered, in the same 
period of time, by the executioner anywhere. The gallows had 
victims as numerous and unoffending, in that proportion, as the 
flames of inquisition or the guillotine of Jacobinism. Twenty 
put to death for witchcraft in the neighbourhood whence the most 
violent sermons were fulminated against the war of 1S12, sixty 
tortured or terrified into false confessions, jails filled with accused 
by the bigotry of one age, were the natural predestination of the 
intolerance of another. Nor was it only clerical outrage. A law 
of New York that all Popish priests coming voluntarily into that 
state should be hanged, was as deadly a blow as any dealt by 
the most bigoted monarch. The clergy of New England, who 
took an active and efficient part for the war of the Revolution, 
cast the sword of their fiery opposition into the scale against the 
second war with England, which most of the state legislatures, 
the lawyers, merchants, and wealthy people of that region at 
first promoted and then opposed. When declared, eastern pulpits 
resounded with its curses. " It was a war unexampled in his- 
tory, proclaimed on the most frivolous and groundless pretences," 
preached one ; "let no consideration whatever deter my brethren, 
at all times and in all places, from execrating the present war. 
Mr. Madison has declared it, let Mr. Madison carry it on. The 
Union has been long since virtually dissolved, and it is high time 
that this part of the disunited states should take care of itself. " 
" The strong prepossessions of so great a proportion of his fellow- 
citizens in favour of a race of demons, (French,) and against a 
nation of more religion, virtue, good faith, generosity and benefi- 
cence than any that now is, or ever before has been, on the face of 
the earth," (British,) sighed another of these reverend pastors to 
his congregation, " wring my soul with anguish, and fill my 
heart with apprehension and terror of the judgments of Heaven 
upon this sinful people. If at the command of weak or wicked 
rulers they undertake an unjust war, each man who volunteers 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 53 

his services in such a cause, or loans his money for its support, or 
by his conversation, his writings, or any other mode of influence 
encourages its prosecution, that man is an accomplice in the wick- 
edness — loads his conscience with the blackest crimes — brings the 
guilt of blood upon his soul, and in the sight of God and his law 
is a murderer. 

" Since the period of the pretended repeal of the French de- 
crees, scores if not hundreds of our vessels have been seized in 
French ports or burnt at sea by French cruizers; while many of 
their unoffending crews were manacled like slaves, confined in 
French prisons, or forced on board French ships to fight against 
England. 

" Our government, with a hardihood and effrontery at which 
demons might have blushed, persisted in asserting the repeal. 

" My mind has been in a constant agony, not so much at the 
inevitable loss of our temporal prosperity and happiness, and the 
complicated miseries of war, as at its guilt, its outrage against 
Heaven; against all truth, honesty, justice, goodness — against all 
the principles of social happiness. 

" Were not the authors of this war nearly akin to the deists and 
atheists of France ; were they not men of hardened hearts, seared 
consciences, reprobate minds, and desperate wickedness; it seems 
utterly inconceivable that they should have made the declaration. 
One hope only remains, that this stroke of perfidy may open the 
eyes of a besotted people ; that they may awake like a giant from 
his slumbers, and wreak their vengeance on their betrayers, by 
driving them from their stations and placing at the helm more 
skilful and faithful hands. 

" If at the present moment no symptoms of civil war appear, 
they certainly will soon, unless the courage of the war party 
should fail them. 

" A civil war becomes as certain as the events that happen ac- 
cording to the known laws and established course of nature. 

" The Israelites became weary of yielding the fruit of their la- 
bour to pamper their splendid tyrants. They left their political 
woes. They separated. Where is our Moses ? Where is the 
rod of his miracles ? Where is our Aaron ? Alas, no voice from 
the burning bush has directed them here. There is a point, there 
is an hour beyond which you will not bear. 



54 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

" Such is the temper of American republicanism, so called. A 
new language must be invented before we attempt to express the 
baseness of their conduct, or describe the rottenness of their hearts. 
" New England, if invaded, would be obliged to defend herself. 
Do you not then owe it to your children, and owe it to your God 
to make peace for yourselves. 

" You may as well expect the cataract of Niagara to turn its 
head to Lake Superior, as a wicked Congress to make a pause in 
the work of destroying their country, while the people will fur- 
nish the means. 

" Alas ! we have no Moses to stretch his rod over the sea ! No 
Lebanon, nor Carmel,nor Zion invites us across the deep. 

" The republics of Rome and Venice, and perhaps another which 
alone exists, have been as oppressive as the despotism of Turkey, 
of Persia or Japan. 

" Should the English now be at liberty to send all their armies 
and all their ships to America, and, in one day, burn every city 
from Maine to Georgia, your condescending rulers would play on 
their harps, while they gazed at the tremendous conflagration. 

" Tyrants are the same on the banks of the Nile and the Poto- 
mac ; at Memphis and at Washington, in a monarchy and a re- 
public. 

" Like the worshipers of Moloch, the supporters of a vile ad- 
ministration sacrifice their children and families on the altar of 
democracy. Like the widows of Hindostan, they consume them- 
selves. Like the frantic votaries of Juggernaut, they throw them- 
selves under the car of their political idol. They are crushed by 
its bloody wheels. 

"The full vials of despotism are poured on your heads. And 
yet you may challenge the plodding Israelite, the stupid African, 
the feeble Chinese, the drowsy Turk, or the frozen exile of Sibe- 
ria, to equal you in tame submission to the powers that be. 

" Here we must trample on the mandates of despotism, or here 
we must remain slaves forever. 

" You may envy the privilege of Israel, and wonder that no 
land of Canaan has been promised to your ancestors. You can 
not separate from that mass of corruption, which would poison 
the atmosphere of Paradise. You must in obstinate despair bow 
down your necks to the yoke and with your African brethren 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 55 

drag the chains of Virginia despotism, unless you discover some 
other mode of escape. 

" Has not New England as much to apprehend as the sons of 
Jacob had ? but no child had been taken from the river to lead us 
through the sea. 

" If judgments are coming on the nation, if the sea does not open 
thee a path, where, how, in what manner will you seek relief? 

" God will bring good from every evil : the furnaces of Egypt 
lighted Israel to the land of Canaan. 

"What sooty slave, in all the ancient dominions, more obsequi- 
ously watched the eye of his master and flew to the indulgences 
of his desires more servilely than those same masters have waited 
and watched and obeyed the orders of the great Napoleon ? 

" Let every man who sanctions this war by his suffrage or influ- 
ence, remember that he is labouring to cover himself and his coun- 
try with blood. The blood of the slain will cry from the ground 
against him. 

" How will the supporters of this anti-christian warfare endure 
their sentence — endure their own reflections — endure the fire that 
forever burns — the worm which never dies — the hosannas of 
heaven, while the smoke of their torments ascends for ever and 
ever ! 

" To raise army after army to be sacrificed, when the English 
do all which is possible to soften the rigors of captivity, by kind- 
ness to the prisoners which they have taken by thousands and 
thousands, restoring them to their families without a ransom and 
without their request ; to carry on such a war after their only 
avowed cause had heen removed, is it not the lawless attacks of 
Goths and Vandals, the daring pillage of wild Arabs, a libidinous 
outrage on all the principles of Christianity, an impious abandon- 
ment of Divine protection ? 

"The legislators who yielded to this war, when assailed by the 
manifesto of their angry chief, established iniquity and murder 
by law. 

"In the first onset (of the war) moral principle was set at defi- 
ance. The laws of God and hopes of man were utterly disdained. 
Vice threw off her veil, and crimes were decked with the highest 
honours. This war not only tolerates crimes, but calls for them, de- 
mands them. Crimes are the food of its life, the arms of its strength. 
This war is a monster which every hour gormandizes a thousand 



56 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

crimes, and yet cries 'give, give !' In its birth it demanded the 
violation of all good faith ; perjury of office ; the sacrifice of neu- 
tral impartiality. The first moment in which the dragon moved, 
piracy and murder were legalized. Havoc, death, and conflagra- 
tion were the viands of her first repast. 

" Those western states which have been violent for this abomi- 
nable war of murder, those states which have thirsted for blood, 
God has given them blood to drink. Their lamentations are deep 
and loud. 

" Our government, if they may be called the government, and 
not the destroyers of the country, bear all these things as pa- 
tiently as a colony of convicts sail into Botany Bay." 

Such were some of the eastern pulpit fulminations against the 
war. Detestation of fellow-countrymen, idolatry of the enemy, 
dismemberment of the Union, diabolical hatred of the French' 
are the materials of rhapsodies, still not without the redeeming 
spirit of conviction, or the unction of that peculiar oratory 
which, from the pages of Scripture, lights the torch by its flagrant 
denunciations. The same exclusive provincialism limited the 
morbid, otherwise elegant speeches of Fisher Ames to evanes- 
cent recollection, while the Catholic nationality of Adams' em- 
balms his with historical odour. 

During the French hostilities of the latter's presidency, adhe- 
sion to his administration was signalized by the same furious de- 
clamation from the pulpit and the bar of New England, which 
afterwards turned to sour opposition to the war against Great 
Britain. In a Fourth of July address by one of the clergy, he 
charged his hearers to watch the ungrateful souls who murmur 
about taxation and oppression, the burdens of government and 
religion, as traitors to God and Christianity ; to be jealous of those 
who declaimed against alien and sedition laws, for they had pro- 
bably a hankering for lying and rebellion. The reverend gentle- 
man added, "Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood; 
let him that hath none sell his coat and buy one ; the contest is 
desirable." " The intimate connection," said another clergyman, 
in an address to President Adams from a convention of Congrega- 
tional ministers, "between our civil and Christian blessings, is 
alone sufficient to justify the decided part which the clergy of 
America have uniformly taken in supporting the constituted au- 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 57 

thorities and political institutions of their country." " As citizens," 
says another, " we ought, with one heart, to cleave to and support 
our own government ; to repel with indignation every suggestion 
and slanderous insinuation calculated to weaken a just confidence 
in the rectitude of the intentions of our constituted authorities." 

Yet the church has its schisms and feuds, when distraction vents 
itself in division: without superior authority to quell or regulate 
them, the church is as liable to commotion as civil government; 
the most peculiar, if not most peaceable of all, is without disci- 
pline beyond reason and inward faith. Churches are every day 
in America raised and built by popular or polemical preachers. 
Eloquence is capital as reliable as orthodoxy. Not only clergy- 
men, but many others of the devout of both sexes go, as it were, 
armed with controversial talent. Some sects, by printed homilies, 
war on others. Not one is passive, not one obedient to govern- 
ment. Many deem it a duty to denounce as sinful whatever 
political or social error they deem such. Thousands of popes 
excommunicate. The scaffold, stake and incarceration are sup- 
planted by anathemas which, with overwhelming influence, attack 
all backslidings doomed to reprobation. The passages from ser- 
mons exactly before quoted, indicate a church militant in the 
United States, with acrimonious faculties. Freedom prevails in 
the church as for the press and for speech ; and the results of 
the experiment are wonderfully working out. Still the spirit 
which converted the heathen, burned women for witchcraft, and 
propagates doctrine to the uttermost ends of the earth, is an edu- 
cated and brave spirit, however intolerant or rancorous ; extrava- 
gant if not licentious and ferocious; a spirit of unconquerable 
ardour and patriotism ; a spirit not meek but militant. 

This element of American political influence has been but little 
attended to. Politics, parties, government, society, manners, 
habits, education, feel the meddlesomeness of a voluntary church, 
whose numberless creeds are propagated by innumerable enthu- 
siasts in restless activity, at great expense and every hazard. 

The character and opinions of the church had great effect on 
those of the state. The Congress which declared war, deterred 
by the denunciations of the church and authorities of several 
states, left undone the duty of levying direct taxes and internal 
duties. After a session protracted from the 4th November, 1811, 



58 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

till the 6th July, 1812, it adjourned upon the declaration of 
war, having enacted many laws to increase expenditures by 
organizing and augmenting the military and naval establish- 
ments, without any tax beyond doubling the impost. Five 
millions of treasury notes, one hundred per cent, addition to 
the impost, and a loan of eleven millions of dollars, with no 
other security than the surplus of the eight millions a year 
theretofore pledged, by way of sinking fund, to redeem the 
existing national debt, then amounting to forty-five millions of 
dollars, were the only acts of the war-declaring Congress for 
invigorating the money-sinew of war. The national income of 
the year 1812 was only about nine millions and a half of 
dollars. It soon appeared that the war cost between thirty and 
forty millions a year. The income of 1813, with double duties, 
was about thirteen millions, independent of loans. The out- 
standing national debt of forty-five millions, with which the 
war began, was increased by less than three years of it to 
one hundred and twenty-three millions, mostly by loans at six 
and more per cent, interest, and heavy discount. Within twen- 
ty-three years afterward, the whole debt of the United States 
was extinguished, with partial atonement for the non-payment 
of that of the Revolution, by an extensive pension system, some- 
what requiting the soldiers of the Revolution, defrauded of their 
pay by continental or paper money and national insolvency. This 
American Republic is the only nation that has ever paid its 
national debts in full. Other nations never do so. While Eng- 
land calumniates us for national dishonesty, she will not, cannot, 
no one supposes that she ever can pay, the principal of her 
debt, the interest of which has been frequently compromised, 
and for a quarter of this century was paid only in paper pro- 
mises to pay money which was not paid. Our debt was contracted 
chiefly by loans, and paid in paper money, but it was legally con- 
vertible into money. What other governments unjustly leave to 
posterity, Congress paid ; the same generation that contracted the 
debt paid it ; many of them the same men who voted for the war, 
and supported it throughout. Among these it is due to William 
Lowndes, of South Carolina, to signalize him as a leading 
author of this exemplary national honesty and policy, originated 
during the presidency of James Monroe, and completed during 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 59 

that of Andrew Jackson ; three men whose conspicuous parts 
in the war of 1812 will shine in its annals. 

William Lowndes entered Congress a young man, voted for the 
declaration of war, and remained always a distinguished mem- 
ber of Congress till his death, some years after the war, at sea, 
on a voyage prescribed for his failing health. Extremely tall, 
six feet six inches high, and slender, not erect nor of prepossess- 
ing appearance, he was a gentleman of respectable parentage, and 
considerable patrimonial fortune ; educated at school in England, 
never at college there or here, well read, with retentive memory, 
a turn for political economy and those principles of freedom 
from industrial restriction which since flourish in South Carolina. 
The delegation from that state in Congress, Langdon Cheves, 
John C. Calhoun, and William Lowndes particularly, were con- 
stant advocates of the war, opposed to the restrictive system of 
embargoes, non-importation, and non-intercourse by which Jeffer- 
son strove in vain to prevent recourse to arms ; and opposed to 
all such restraints. Mr. Lowndes was retiring and unassuming, 
firm and constant in his manners and politics ; without a good 
voice, not a powerful speaker; so generally esteemed and re- 
spected that he was much regarded as a statesman fit to be 
president. It was he who said of that elevation since so openly 
canvassed, that it should neither be sought nor avoided. Pre- 
mature death, when, I believe, not much more than forty years 
of age, deprived him of the public honour which the United 
States had to confer on one not, perhaps, so popular with the 
mass as some others, but universally respected and esteemed, and 
without enemies. 

In 1812, when our budget was about twenty-five millions, 
that of Great Britain was near five hundred millions; her loan 
larger than our whole revenue. 

The most violent opposition to the war came from Massachu- 
setts, particularly Boston, the cradle of the revolution, where 
they seeemed to become as strong in English attachments as 
they once were in aversions. Many of the most violent op- 
posers of the war of 1812, almost rebels against it, were sons 
or near connections of the noblest rebels in the Revolution. 
Parties were so nearly divided there, that in 1812, Caleb Strong, 
the candidate of the peace party for governor, succeeded by a 



60 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

majority of but thirteen hundred out of more than a hundred 
thousand votes altogether, over Elbridge Gerry, the candidate 
of the war party, soon after chosen Vice-President of the United 
States. Boston not long before was represented in Congress by 
William Eustis, afterwards Secretary of War; but in the thir- 
teenth Congress by Artemas W T ard, the son, I believe, of the 
General Ward who figured in the beginning of the Revolution. 
A surviving member of the Massachusetts delegation in that 
Congress, Mr. John Reed, now lieutenant-governor, in 1814 re- 
presented a north-eastern district, much of it taken and held 
by the British, without serious molestation from our people. The 
island of Nantucket, part of the Boston district, was neutral 
ground, if even that, throughout the war. The strongest cham- 
pions of incessant and implacable hostility to war, of the Massa- 
chusetts delegation in Congress, were Timothy Pickering and 
Cyrus King. Mr. King was a half-brother of Rufus King; an- 
other brother, William, was afterwards Governor of Maine. Cyrus 
King was a frequent, vehement, and the loudest speaker in the 
House of Representatives. Timothy Pickering's is a name familiar 
and conspicuous in the first fifty years of the United States. He 
served in the commissariat in the army of the Revolution ; was 
Postmaster-General, then Secretary of State in Washington's ad- 
ministration, and as the latter inherited by President John Adams, 
to whom it proved an unprofitable devise ; for he became so 
hostile to his own chief as to condemn his measures, his appoint- 
ments, and even carry opposition to the extreme of denouncing 
the president at his drawing-rooms as a fool and a marplot. This 
was because Mr. Adams paused in going all lengths in joining 
England in a war against France. In 1S12, Mr. Pickering abated 
none of this antipathy ; but abominated the French and their 
emperor as heartily as the Englishman who proclaimed it part 
of his creed to hate a Frenchman. Mr. Pickering was a large- 
framed, muscular man, with a prominent Roman face, intense in 
his politics, hating Adams, not esteeming Washington's talents, 
holding Jefferson and his school in sovereign aversion. It was said 
that Washington spoiled a good postmaster-general to make a 
bad secretary of state, when he promoted Mr. Pickering from one 
of these places to the other. But Mr. Madison jocularly added 
that after due allowance for Pickering's abuse of the French, 



CHAP. L] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 61 

with which his dispatches were always spiced, they were able 
papers. In 1S12 he was the representative of what was called the 
Essex Junto, a root and branch opponent of the war, and denounced 
all who loaned money for it. If he had been a clergyman, his 
homilies would have been in unison with those before quoted 
as specimens ef the clerical tone of Massachusetts ; yet was he 
perhaps as well entitled to his opinions as those who thought other- 
wise, and perfectly sincere in them. His reputation was that of a 
consistent, upright man, who lived and died firm in the convic- 
tions he cherished : hard, but honest. On a great field day 
debate, in 1814, on the Loan Bill, when the House in committee 
of the whole gave six weeks to those speeches for political capi- 
tal at home and abroad, which are among the ways and means 
of free countries with a free press — much preferable to more 
serious combats — Mr. Pickering, in the course of his harangue 
looking through his spectacles full in the chairman's face, said, 
with great emphasis, swinging his long arm aloft, that he stood 
on a rock. "I stand on a rock," said he, "from which all demo- 
cracy," then raising his voice and repeating it, " not all demo- 
cracy, and hell to boot, can move me — the rock of integrity 
and truth." 

Governor Strong, in his message to the Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts, likewise from that same Plymouth rock, denounced 
Madison's administration as subservient to France, discredited 
the war loans; sowed the seeds of the Hartford Convention next 
year. The Governor of Connecticut, and the Governor of Mary- 
land, were also strong in disapprobation of the war. Mr. Gallatin, 
the Secretary of the Treasury's policy, if not that of Madison's 
administration, to begin war by loans, without taxes, contrary to 
the wish of Mr. Langdon Cheves, chairman of the committee 
of Ways and Means, and other proper advocates of the war, ren- 
dered the revenue by loans alone, or mostly so, for the loans were 
larger than the income from customs, the most vulnerable point 
of government, upon which eastern opposition fastened its fangs 
with furious acritude. 

Newspapers teemed with denunciation of such as should sub- 
scribe to war loans, in which the pulpit of Boston vied with the 
press. " The subscribers to war loans," said a reverend clergy- 
man, " would be participators in the unholy, unrighteous, wicked, 
vol. i. — 6 



V 



g2 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

abominable and unnatural war." "Let no one," said a press, 
" dare to prostrate himself at the altar, who wishes to continue the 
war by lending money. They are as much partakers in the war 
as the soldier who thrusts the bayonet, and the judgment of God 
will overtake them. Do not prevent the abusers of their trust be- 
coming bankrupt. Pray do not : any federalist who loans money to 
government, must go and shake hands with James Madison, and 
claim fellowship with Felix Grundy! Let him no more call 
himself a federalist and friend to his country. He will be called by 
others infamous. Who can tell whether future rulers may think 
the debt ought to be paid ? Two very strong reasons why fede- 
ralists will not lend money, are first, because it would be a base 
abandonment of political and moral principles; secondly, because 
it is pretty certain they never will be paid again. The universal 
sentiment is, that any man who lends his money to the govern- 
ment at the present time, will forfeit all claim to common honesty 
and common courtesy among all true friends to the country." As 
far south as the city of New York, where the kind of opposition 
rife in New England, did not prevail, the press of a New Eng- 
land editor declared that no true friend to his country would be 
found among the subscribers to the Gallatin loan. "No peace," 
said an eastern clergyman, " will ever be made till the people say 
there shall be no war. If the rich men continue to furnish money," 
said this minister of the Gospel, with anguish at their alacrity of 
subscription, "the war will continue till the mountains are wetted 
with blood, till every field in America is white with the bones of 
the people." Advertisements appeared in Boston newspapers, 
promising to conceal the names of subscribers to the loans ; such 
was the intimidation leveled at all who ventured to subscribe. 
Timothy Pickering openly and anxiously decried these loans. 

Some years after the war, Harrison Gray Otis published fifteen 
letters to vindicate the Hartford Convention, of which he Was a 
leading member ; to the last of which is appended a short corre- 
spondence between him and George Cabot, to show that at a 
certain advanced period of the war, when a gentleman of high 
character went from Philadelphia to Boston, with proposals from 
opulent persons in the one to the other city, to be concerned in 
taking one of the loans proposed by the United States, a meeting 
of some of the principal and opulent citizens of Boston was held, 
at which the expediency of subscribing to the loan was considered. 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 63 

Mr. Otis urged various sufficient reasons for subscribing, but was 
overruled by the majority. Lucrative, like patriotic considera- 
tions, failed. A respectable descendant of one of the discoverers of 
America, Mr. Cabot, and an eminent descendant, Mr. Otis, as he 
justly boasts, of some of the most distinguished opponents of 
Great Britain in the war of the Revolution, with many other 
influential men, were not permitted to lend even their credit to 
government for the war of 1812: when the peace party ticket, 
Mr. Otis says, was elected in Massachusetts by a majority of 
twenty-four thousand. 

Both the loans were, nevertheless, taken; that of eleven millions 
in 1812, chiefly by banks; that of sixteen millions in 1813, by 
David Parish, and Stephen Girard, at Philadelphia, Mr. John 
Jacob Astor of New York, and other persons, as well as banks ; 
the latter at 88 per cent, for six per cent, stock, or at par with an 
annuity of one and a half per cent, per annum. Worse than the 
opposition and abuse leveled at these loans was the resort to 
such expedients : exchanging the credit of government for that of 
banks or individuals not as good as the credit of the government, 
paying usury for the exchange, and borrowing on such terms 
without taxes or any other security. These, valid objections to 
Gallatin's loans, as they were called, were not mentioned ; on the 
contrary, they were used as arguments by one class of opponents 
to persuade another to subscribe, because of the manifest gain to 
the lender, and disadvantage to government. Reason was cast 
down with patriotism, and trampled upon by factious disaffection. 

With resistance to the war loans, New England joined refusal 
of their well-organized militia to the command of officers of the 
army, appointed by the president to command them. The con- 
stituted authorities of Massachusetts, legislature, governor, and 
judiciary unanimously resolved that their militia were not liable 
to be called out when the President of the United States thought 
necessary, and that when called out he could not depute his autho- 
rity to command them. To these heresies was added the other 
extremely mischievous blow to the war, that militia cannot be 
lawfully marched beyond the frontiers of their own country. 
Finally, Mr. Josiah Quincy, who had represented Boston in 
Congress, and said that the United States could not be kicked 
into a war, as a member of the Senate of Massachusetts moved 
a resolution that in a war waged like ours, without sufficient 



64 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

cause, and prosecuted in a manner indicating that conquest and 
ambition were its real motives, it was unbecoming a moral and 
religions people to express any approbation of military or naval 
exploits, not immediately connected with the defence of our 
coast and soil. The gentleman who moved this resolution was 
of revolutionary pedigree ; Governor Strong had been an officer 
of the Revolution; like many others equally unreserved in resist- 
ance to the war of 1812, they never lost the confidence of those 
by whom they were elevated to high public stations : which, 
together with all other indications, infers a state of enmity to the 
war and the administration of it, deeply rooted in the public 
sentiment of that intelligent part of the country. 

This feeling of exasperated opposition to the war, predomi- 
nant in New England, sent to Congress some thirty-five of the 
forty members of the popular branch, and seven of the ten 
senators from that quarter of the Union, with the confidence of 
four states, and the influence of powerful talent in both Houses, 
ably sustained by eminent members of the New York, New 
Jersey, North Carolina, and Maryland delegations. Daniel 
Webster, the son of a New Hampshire farmer, not then distin- 
guished as he has since become, was among the first, of whom 
Jeremiah Mason, Timothy Pickering, and Timothy Pitkin, were 
the most conspicuous, from New England. Mr. Webster's dark 
complexion, sunk and searching eye, prominent brow, volumi- 
nous head, and well-sized person, are good frontispiece of his 
powerful intellect and oratory. Diction chaste, pure, and ele- 
gant ; logic admirable ; but action not animated or attractive, 
render his speeches less effective when delivered than as read 
afterwards. His greatest performances are elaborations. What- 
ever nature has done, labour does her part too. Not merely 
education, but after-culture, without which the learning of schools, 
however indispensable, seldom suffices. Evolving striking 
thoughts with great force, though occasionally sarcastic or ironi- 
cal, he is never aggressive, personal, or rude. It was said that 
when William Pinkney was at the head of the bar of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, he designated Mr. Webster 
as fit to follow him there, where his performances soon came to 
be such, that after Pinkney's death, he was the acknowledged 
leader. Mr. Webster came to the House of Representatives, one 
of the New Hampshire members. During the war of 1812, 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 65 

New Hampshire was a federal state, and Vermont democratic, 
party positions which they have changed since. 

By act of Congress of the 8th April, 1812, the Territory of 
Louisiana was declared to be one of the United States of Ame- 
rica, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the 
original states, with one member in the House of Representatives. 
The eighteen states thus constituting the Union, by the act of 
the 23d December, 1S11, apportioning representatives at the 
rate of one for every thirty-five thousand inhabitants, pursuant 
to the third enumeration of the whole, numbered one hundred 
and seventy-seven members in the House of Representatives, 
and thirty-six senators, altogether two hundred and thirteen 
members of Congress, besides the Vice-president of the United 
States, presiding in the Senate. The New York delegation of 
twenty-seven members of the House, was then, for the first time, 
more numerous than that of any other state. Pennsylvania was 
the second state in members, having twenty-three representa- 
tives; Virginia the third, with twenty-two. The members from 
New Hampshire, most of those from Massachusetts, then includ- 
ing Maine, those of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, 
and Delaware, with several from New York, some from Virginia 
and North Carolina, one from Pennsylvania, and three from 
Maryland, opposed the war. The members from Vermont, 
some from New York, all but one from Pennsylvania, most from 
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, all from South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana, sup- 
ported it. The States of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, New York, and Delaware were represented by senators 
opposed to the war. Massachusetts and Maryland were divided. 
Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina, 
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana were repre- 
sented by senators supporting the war, in the first session of the 
thirteenth Congress. Of course there were some shades of 
opinion in both Houses. A senator from each of the States of 
New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland was indis- 
posed to Madison's administration; as also two or three mem- 
bers of the House of Representatives from North and South 
Carolina and Kentucky. Of the large commercial towns, Boston 
and New York were represented by members opposed to the 
war. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans, 

6* 



66 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

by members for it. The eastern states were mostly opposed 
to it. The west all for it. The southern and middle states divided. 
The war administration had a majority of about forty votes in 
the House of Representatives, and of several in the Senate. The 
war was opposed by most of the merchants, lawyers, and clergy, 
and some of the planters. It was supported generally by the 
farmers, planters, mechanics, mariners, and the mass of the 
people. Taking the reasoning faculty of the country for judge, 
probably the declaration of war was mostly condemned ; but 
the instinctive patriotism of the young, the laborious and ardent 
enthusiastically maintained it. Few denied that there was 
cause enough; though the time and mode were condemned. 

With Mr. Webster came Mr. Jeremiah Mason, a senator from 
New Hampshire, still living, an eminent lawyer at Boston. His 
politics obnoxious to the democratic party of New Hampshire, 
when they gained the ascendant, induced an attack on Mr. Mason 
as president of the Branch Bank of the United States, at Ports- 
mouth, which ended in his change of residence to Boston. The 
combination for his discharge from the bank was resisted by 
Nicholas Biddle, the president of that institution, between whom 
and Mr. Samuel D. Ingham, then Secretary of the Treasury, began 
the skirmish that became exterminating conflict between the 
bank and President Jackson. Mr. Mason, six feet seven inches 
tall, and corpulent, was one of the most frequent and formidable 
debaters of the Senate, sagacious, sarcastic, active, well-informed, 
one of the ablest opponents of the war and Madison's adminis- 
tration. 

The leader of the federal party in the Senate during the war, 
was a native of Massachusetts ; and one of the delegates from 
that respectable commonwealth to the Convention which formed 
the present constitution of the United States, in which assembly 
of wise men, though then a young one, he was conspicuous for 
abilities — Mr. Rufus King. Marrying a lady of considerable 
fortune in New York, he established himself there, and repre- 
sented that state in the Senate of the Union, during part of 
Washington's presidency. Appointed by him to succeed Major, 
afterwards Major-General Thomas Pinckney, as American min- 
ister to England, Mr. King resided there during seven years, 
under Washington, John Adams, and Jefferson's administrations, 
returning to New York in 1803 : some years after, again elected 
to the Senate. It was well for the country that he filled the im- 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 67 

portant station of leader of the minority during the war, for he 
was liberal, fair, and conciliatory, never the patron of intemperate 
or factious opposition. He was a man well educated and well 
informed, fond of learning, a good speaker and writer, a federalist 
of the school of Washington, with, perhaps, some of Hamilton's 
more English propensities, but, like them both, patriotic in Ame- 
rican predilections. His party designed him for the presidency 
He subscribed, I think, to the war loans, and his opposition to it 
was never personal to Madison's administration. In 1825, Presi- 
dent John Quincy Adams appointed him again minister to Eng- 
land ; after a short stay there, afflicted with the gout, he returned, 
and closed a long life of eminent public service. If New England 
had been influenced in 1812 and 1S13 by Mr. King's temperate 
and honourable spirit, the states which frustrated the war might, 
have added Canada to their weight in the Union. 

There was, indeed, abundant basis for legitimate opposition, 
without resort to what was unfounded, if not unprincipled. The 
country suffered not less from its government, than from the 
party making opposition to it. The executive and Congress of 
1812 were both obnoxious to severe animadversion, and it is 
the part of all historical recollection to explain the extreme im- 
perfectness, from which the United States were providentially 
rescued by the inherent energies and resources of a free, martial, 
and intellectual people. At the same time, large allowances are 
due to those on whom the experiment, for such it was, devolved 
of making war without soldiers or officers, money, taxes, or ma- 
nufactures. As the country grows, even with republican repug- 
nance to restraint, it improves in military preparations. The 
United States are much further advanced in armament now, 
compared with 1812, than in 1812 they were compared with 
1776. Thirty years of popular and lucrative peace, in 1812 
found the government not only without most of the means and 
science, but nearly all the spirit and aptitude for hostilities. 

The war began with a president commander-in-chief who ab- 
horred war; a man of probity, and, as a chief magistrate, resolved 
to do all he could for its prosecution. But he had no taste, pre- 
tended to no knowledge of it, and did not even sustain himself by 
counsellors knowing more than he. The only one, with any turn 
or experience that way, was not appointed for that reason ; the 
Secretary of State, Mr. Monroe, had never performed more than 



65 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

slight military service many years before, as a lieutenant or aid- 
de-camp. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gallatin, avow- 
edly opposed to declaring war, after it was declared, deemed 
speedy peace, by other than belligerent means, the only salva- 
tion of the country. The Secretary of War, Eustis, had probably 
never seen a brigade of regular troops, had never served in any 
military capacity or had any knowledge of the subject. The 
Secretary of the Navy, Hamilton, had, perhaps, never seen a 
ship of war, had no knowledge whatever of naval affairs. The 
attorney-general, Pinkney, questioned whether war was not 
premature while government was so entirely unprepared. The 
Postmaster-General, Gideon Granger, not then, as now, a cabi- 
net officer, but at the head of a department important for military 
operations, was disaffected to the president, in party sympathies 
with senators and others professing, perhaps entertaining, inclina- 
tions for the war, but denying that with Madison as leader, it 
ever could prosper. The numerous and respectable party, who, 
as a party opposed the declaration of war, not quite as well 
founded in their resistance to it, as those who, in 1775 and 1776 
opposed the Declaration of Independence, had, nevertheless, 
much reason in the alleged precipitancy of the step for resisting 
it. If the peace party of 1812 had, like the temporizers of the 
Revolution, acquiesced when the declaration lawfully took place, 
their position would have been not only honourable, but for the 
first two years of war, during its wretched noviciate, more envi- 
able than that of the war party. But in New England particu- 
larly, either from sectional temperament, or because several states 
there were governed by those always opposed to Jefferson and 
Madison's government, and held the local power with angry 
disaffection to wield it, opposition was carried beyond all patri- 
otic bounds, until at length, touching upon treason, it was fortu- 
nately crushed by western and southern victories, together with 
maritime successes, and English unwarrantable warfare, rousing 
and uniting the masses who think less than feel, together with the 
considerate and calculating, to rally round the federal government 
for support, to save the Union from dismemberment, the states 
from anarchy, the country from civil, worse than foreign war. 

The conjuncture was altogether new for the executive ; a single 
and responsible chief-magistrate with great constitutional power, 
indeed, which no one comprehended more fully and precisely 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 69 

than Madison. The uttermost emergencies of war never ex- 
torted from him any excess of authority. If De Witt Clinton had 
superseded Madison, by the presidential election of 1812, it is no 
disparagement of either to say that the tone of executive action 
would have been much more imposing ; such is the difference 
of men's minds on any given subject. There was nothing like 
that potent secret machinery, which in other countries acts with 
great effect as police : no fund of secret service money. The 
president was obliged to do openly nearly all he could do. A 
much abused act of Congress of 1798, concerning alien ene- 
mies, which Madison and Gallatin opposed as unconstitutional, 
and their partisans stigmatized as one of the worst rescripts of 
what was called the Reign of Terror, was waked from slumber, 
to confer nearly all the authority President Madison had or 
found necessary for much of his interior government. This law 
provides that in case of war, invasion, or predatory incursion, 
attempted or threatened against the United States, by any foreign 
nation or government, and the president proclaiming the event, 
all males of the hostile nation, upwards of fourteen years of age, 
and unnaturalized, may be apprehended, restrained, secured, and 
removed as alien enemies: for which purpose the president is 
authorized by public act to provide. The courts of the United 
States, and of each state, having criminal jurisdiction, are or- 
dered to take cognizance of such cases, and the marshals of the 
several districts to remove alien enemies out of the territory of 
the United States, pursuant to order of the courts, or the president. 
This act, with a supplement of July 1812, immaterial to our pre- 
sent object, conferred all the executive power the president had, 
except as such by the declaration of war, and inherent signifi- 
cancy of that term. Before the congress which declared war 
adjourned, they provided in the last moment of session by a hasty 
enactment, that the president should have power to make such 
regulations and arrangements for the safe keeping, support and 
exchange of prisoners of war as he might deem expedient, 
until otherwise provided for by law, and placed $100,000 at 
his disposal for that purpose. But the succeeding congress 
never did otherwise make legal provision for the purpose, or 
meddle with the matter at all. General John Mason, then living 
on his beautiful island of Analoston, in the Potomac, near Wash- 
ington in hospitable elegance, a favourite with the president, and 



70 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

deservedly so, for he performed the duties of the office with 
ability, was appointed commissary general of prisoners, by exe- 
cutive fiat, without specified authority by act of Congress. The 
marshals, by the before-mentioned act of 1798, directed to re- 
move alien enemies out of our territories, were likewise by the 
mere war executive power of the president made to place them in 
security at certain distances from sea-ports within the United 
States. In all the business of life, much is accomplished imper- 
ceptibly, almost of itself. In war there must needs be many im- 
portant things done by inherent or constructive power ; under a 
government of granted and limited authorization, an everlasting 
subject of dispute. It was fortunate for the country that how- 
ever imperfectly some of the belligerent, functions were per- 
formed by one so scrupulous and fastidious as Madison, no one 
understood better the exact amount of his authority, or was less 
inclined to make more of it than the law allowed. 

In all European governments, there is a power of secret and 
effectual instrumentality called police, which acts with great au- 
thority. This was wholly unknown in the United States. — 
Though the war was alleged to be partly caused by Henry's 
clandestine mission from Canada into New England, and Madi- 
son's administration gave him $50,000 for disclosing that design, 
(probably more than the disclosure was worth,) yet was there 
no American emissary anywhere. Congress usually appropriate 
annually a small sum for the expenses of intercourse with foreign 
nations; for the year 1813, $35,400. Nearly the whole appro- 
priation for the army, and for the navy, was to be paid by 
borrowed and paper money. The Postmaster-General, Gran- 
ger, of Connecticut, a large man in person, shrewd but disinclined 
to Madison's administration, if not to the war, like Mr. Gallatin 
inherited by Madison from Jefferson's administration, though 
the postmaster-general was not then, as since, a cabinet officer — 
Granger was so inimical to Madison, that he found it necessary 
in 1814, to remove him from office, and appoint the Governor 
of Ohio, Return Jonathan Meigs, instead. This department 
throughout the war rendered but little aid to it. 

The incongruity between appropriations and provision for them 
by taxation, was such, that without a cent to be raised by taxes, 
more than fifteen millions of dollars were appropriated for the army, 
and nearly two million seven hundred thousand for the navy, 



CHAP. I.] OF THE WAR OF 1812. 71 

when the income by customs for 1811 did not exceed thirteen mil- 
lions, and that of 1812 was only about nine millions and a half. All 
modern wars are carried on in part by loans, but loans secured by 
taxes. Our war was to be sustained by borrowed money without 
taxes, at any rate till after the presidential election. The loan of 
sixteen millions, authorized by act of the 8th of February, 1813, 
superadded to that for eleven millions, authorized by act of the 
14th of March, 1S12, together with an issue of five millions of 
treasury notes by act of the 30th of June 1812; these thirty-two 
millions of dollars, borrowed without any substantial pledge for 
payment, of even interest of the debt to that amount, were the 
device of the treasury, and the delusion of Congress. The loan 
of 1813, for sixteen millions of dollars, was taken at 88 per cent, 
for 6 per cent, stocks, or at par with an annuity of one and a half 
per cent, per annum. Seven millions of the sum were subscribed 
by Stephen Girard and David Parish, two millions by John Jacob 
Astor, the other seven millions by different banks and persons, 
mostly at Philadelphia and New York. Stephen Girard being 
by birth a Frenchman, Astor and Parish Germans, and Mr. Gal- 
latin a Swiss, though all American citizens of high standing, 
and all but Parish of long standing, it was objected that all the 
means the American government had for carrying on the war 
were supplied by foreigners; an imputation to which nearly all 
the governments of Europe, since, have frequently been ob- 
noxious, if not always. Governments, like individuals, when 
inclined to borrow, get the loan wherever they can. It was 
a much more serious objection to this loan of ours that it was a 
resort, if not ruinous, at least dangerous, to that wasteful system 
of finance which paper money, bank-credits and devolution of 
payment on posterity engrafted on the stock of substantial revenue. 
It was also remarked that while Frenchmen and Germans supplied 
our war funds, their administration was confided through the war 
to Mr. Gallatin, a Swiss, Mr. Campbell, a Scotchman, and Mr. 
Dallas, an Englishman : to which also, however, the reply was 
that the American financial system originated with Robert Mor- 
ris, an Englishman, and Alexander Hamilton, a native of an En- 
glish West India island. My small subscription, (of all I was 
worth, however,) in the alphabetical list of the Bank of Penn- 
sylvania, came next to that of a rich German, Jacob Gerard 
Koch, who subscribed half a million of dollars. Opposition to 



72 HISTORICAL SKETCH [JUNE, 1812. 

the loans caused some reacting patriotism ; and many subscribed 
more than they otherwise would, in order to show their con- 
fidence in the government and support of the war : of which class 
Mr. Koch was one. 

Thus curtailed of war's common appliances at home, the 
Senate deprived Madison abroad of whatever the House of Re- 
presentatives did not combine with it to stint him of. The presi- 
dent's power is strongly executive to fortify the country with sen- 
tinels in the character of foreign ministers whenever he may think 
proper. Madison had never been on any of those missions, but 
Monroe and Pinkney who had, were well aware of their im- 
portance at such a conjuncture. They would have been of great 
importance to plead and vindicate the cause of our forlorn war in 
Europe. But it lingered for more than a year without one such 
help. Mr. Adams was in Russia ; but like Mr. Gallatin, of opinion 
that nothing but prompt peace could save the country from ruin. 
Joel Barlow, our minister to France, died at Zarnowich, in Po- 
land, the 26th of December, 1812. Jonathan Russel, transferred 
from Paris to London, was American charge d'affaires there, only 
till the declaration of war withdrew his faculties. Mr. George 
W. Erving went in 1811 on a special mission to Denmark, like 
Mr. Adams, far from the scene for explanation ; and not commis- 
sioned with any special view to it. Till Mr. Crawford took Mr. 
Barlow's place, in April, 1813, we had hardly a representative in 
all Europe. Austria, Prussia, Italy, Spain, Holland, Portugal, 
Sweden, where we now have public agents, (and even the Con- 
gress of the Revolution deemed them, as they always are, essen- 
tial,) were without an American public minister or private emis- 
sary. It is true that Holland and Portugal, Italy and other parts 
of Europe were then welded into the vast machinery of French 
dominion. Yet while Spain was disputed between Ferdinand 
and Joseph, we had no minister there, for what, under the pecu- 
liar circumstances, was the very reason why two should have 
been commissioned or more if necessary. Madison was thwarted 
by a jealous Senate. In May, 1813, when he nominated Jona- 
than Russel as Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden, the appoint- 
ment was negatived by the Senate on frivolous pretences largely 
set forth in publications on the subject by William B. Giles, 
one of the Virginia senators. In November of that year, Mr. 
De Kantzow arrived at Washington as minister resident from 



CHAP. I.] FOREIGN RELATIONS. 73 

Sweden, and then, at last, Mr. Rnssel was suffered to pass the 
Senate. But the president should have had several more at other 
European capitals ; his power for that purpose was ample, as 
Washington had exercised it without the sanction of the Senate. 
Excepting, however, the special mission of Messrs. Gallatin and 
Bayard, to be united with Mr. Adams at Gottenburg, under the 
fruitless Russian mediation, the whole war was conducted from 
first to last without a diplomatic assistant in Europe. When 
Mr. Crawford reached Paris the French government was help- 
less, was English. Mr. Bayard, a gentleman of too much honour 
and integrity to be wanting to his country, was, nevertheless, of 
the party opposed to war; Mr. Adams soliciting the Russian 
mediation, confessed to Romanstzoff, the Czar's minister, that 
the war could do no good ; he had no hope of it ; he avowed his 
hostile feelings against France. Mr. Gallatin went still further in 
quest of any peace rather than any war. Our foreign relations 
were deserted and desolate. 



vol. i. — 7 



74 INVASION OF CANADA. [JUNE, 1812. 



CHAPTER II. 

INVASION OF CANADA.— HALIFAX CAMPAIGN.— HULL'S EXPEDITION.— 
CAPTURE OF MICHILIMACINACK. — HULL'S SURRENDER. — LOSS OF 
MICHIGAN. — GENERAL CRAIG. —CAPTURE OF THE FRIGATE GUER- 
RIERE.— CAPTAIN HULL.— GENERAL VAN RENSSELAER.— BATTLE OF 
QUEENSTOWN.— GENERAL SMYTHE— GENERAL SCOTT.— MILITIA.— 
SMYTHE'S FAILURE.— NORTHERN ARMY.— GENERAL DEARBORN.— 
COLONEL DUANE.— END OF CAMPAIGN OF 1812. 

My Historical Sketch will begin with the first session of the 
thirteenth Congress, May, 1S13, when I took my seat; that I 
may tell only what I had occasion to know. But the events of 
1813, '14, and '15 will not be so intelligible as if premised by 
some preliminary account of those of 1812. The first chapter 
having explained the causes and character of the war, this chap- 
ter will submit an outline of the belligerent operations of the 
six months of the first year after its declaration. 

To conquer Canada was the promise and reliance of those 
who made war against orders in council and impressment. 
Nothing could be done by sea, as was supposed ; and one of the 
embarrassments of the advocates of war was, that while defen- 
sive against maritime aggressions, it must take the appearance 
and bear the odium of being aggressive, for foreign conquest. 
This false position was especially a hindrance, as the constituted 
authorities and majority of the people of the New England 
states were opposed to the war, and denounced the invasion of 
Canada as its worst direction and effort. Its advantages and 
disadvantages were then fully discussed; expatiation on them 
now since the design came to nothing, would be useless. A 
more important historical consideration is, whether our plan of 
invasion was not wrong ; beginning with blows aimed at the 
branches instead of striking at once at the root of English ter- 
ritorial and naval power in America. 

A project was then presented by a very young American 
officer, whose name will occur often hereafter in connection with 
the most brilliant feats of arms. A project was presented to 



CHAP. II.] HALIFAX CAMPAIGN. 75 

Eustis, the Secretary of War, which he put aside with the rather 
contemptuous remark, that it was a very pretty plan. It pre- 
dicated the enemy's resistless control of the ocean ; and the proba- 
bility that Napoleon's gigantic domination by land was tottering 
to its fall. To meet Great Britain's superior force, then triumph- 
ant everywhere, the United States had but the skeletons of a few 
regiments, and a few frigates. The American sea-coast would 
soon be entirely blockaded, while our land operations during the 
first year of hostilities must be left chiefly to volunteers and 
militia. How then should we make what force we had be 
most effectually felt? Study of naval power shows that it does 
not depend on ships but on seamen, that the nurseries of seamen 
are commerce and fisheries ; the naval marine depends on the 
commercial. In both the United States are second only to Great 
Britain, with advantages of position which with energetic action 
would enable them to neutralize, if not destroy her transatlantic 
ascendency. France, when she possessed the north-eastern 
coasts of America and adjacent islands, employing thirty thou- 
sand seamen in the fisheries and the trade they nourished, was 
a full match for England at sea. At that time the American colo- 
nies fitted out an expedition which besieged and took Louisburg, 
on cape Breton, finally exchanged for Madras at the peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle. At last, however, France lost those posses- 
sions, and with them the trident of the ocean passed into the 
hands of Great Britain. North American territories and fish- 
eries are the main pillar of British naval power. With Nova 
Scotia and cape Breton to protect the Canadas, command New- 
foundland and the gulf St. Lawrence fisheries, Great Britain 
is an insular fortress with these (and numerous other) outworks 
from which to project ships of war, like missile weapons, upon 
the wings of every wind, with which to strike any quarter of the 
globe. Hemp and ship timber for her navy she may get from her 
North American colonies, as well as from the north of Europe ; 
with her American fisheries and possessions, she can build, man, 
equip, rig, arm, and refit her fleets altogether from her own 
means. Bermuda is another outwork, by means of which 
Mexico is controlled, a nation that never can be naval. While 
the United States act on the policy of not interfering with 
foreign nations, Great Britain, with Halifax in the North-East, 
and Bermuda in the South, can put the Mexicans, the Indians, 



76 HALIFAX CAMPAIGN. [JUNE, 1812. 

and her own marine in positions to act against the United 
States. By seizing upon Halifax, the transatlantic faculties of 
Great Britain would be paralyzed; an entire revolution effected 
in the commercial and naval power of the world. Canada 
would fall, of course, including Quebec, which, during six 
months, would be cut off by ice from all European assistance. 
Montreal, York, Kingston, Maiden would also fall, of co.urse. 
The Canadas would not only become parts of the United States, 
but the empire of the seas would be transferred from old Eng- 
land to New England. Halifax was the great rendezvous and 
principal American station, with its large and excellent port, of 
British naval power. To wrest it from her was a simple, how- 
ever difficult operation, worthy the utmost exertions of the 
American nation. It was the only place where British vessels 
could be sheltered and refitted with perfect security, despatch and 
convenience. 

In this confidential memoir presented to the Secretary of War, 
Eustis, it was further argued that the political influence of begin- 
ning our hostilities by an expedition against Halifax, striking at 
the root instead of wasting strength in beating the air by blows 
at the branches, Maiden, York, Fort George, Kingston, and 
Montreal, might, and probably would, be to unite all parties in 
the United States, particularly Massachusetts, Maine, New 
Hampshire, and Vermont, in a movement to depend for its suc- 
cess mainly on their efforts, if successful, to redound chiefly to 
their advantage. The commercial, Northern and Eastern, parts 
of the Union were those opposed to the war, and to Madison's 
administration. Would not an intelligent and sharp-sighted 
population perceive in this movement, motives for their rallying 
to the standard of their country, enabling government to unite 
and employ the whole moral and physical capacity of the nation 
in the prosecution of a war, the justice of which most acknow- 
ledged? which thus directed would render its results especially 
profitable to the maritime interests, would vastly increase their 
commerce, and give a territorial counterpoise to the southern pre- 
ponderance by the recent admission of Louisiana into the Union. 
Halifax, with its fifteen thousand inhabitants, was not as difficult 
a conquest in 1812, as Louisburgh in 174S, when the people 
of New England captured that well-armed fortress without 
English co-operation. 



CHAP. II.] HALIFAX CAMPAIGN. 77 

As a military measure, the mere movement of a considerable 
column in that direction must draw nearly the whole British force 
to be concentrated there for the protection of Halifax; thus strip 
the whole coast of blockading ships ; Quebec, Montreal, and all 
other places in both Canadas as far as from the first named to 
Mackinaw, of all but a few troops, and leave those places at the 
mercy of our troops. If we took Halifax, a death blow was struck 
at British American power; as a diversion or demonstration, the 
expedition would be more effectual than any one or more we 
could send into Upper Canada. 

This project, of which the foregoing is a faint outline, was sug- 
gested, first, to Dr. Eustis, when Secretary of War, who merely 
said it was a very pretty plan ; and afterwards to his successor 
in that department, General Armstrong, through Colonel Duane, 
but none of them relished it till Mr. Monroe superseded General 
Armstrong as acting Secretary of War. Then it was seriously 
contemplated, and would probably have been the plan of opera- 
tions for the campaign of 181.5, but for the peace of Ghent, in 
December, 1814. In the proper stage of these historical remem- 
brances it will be more fully explained. At that time the young 
officer who suggested it, employed as lieutenant-colonel com- 
manding a recruiting rendezvous at Hartford, in Connecticut, 
when the convention sat there with clandestine and ominous de- 
signs, as was apprehended, hostile to the union, was instructed to 
ascertain whether even northern disaffection might not be induced 
to unite in so advantageous an undertaking for New England, as 
the transfer of British maritime and commercial wealth, the fishe- 
ries and Canadas to New England preponderance in the United 
States. I was then in daily communication with Mr. Monroe 
at Washington, and heard from him of this movement. The offi- 
cer to whom its suggestion was confided, reported favourably of 
its reception by a member of the Hartford Convention. If the 
government would give assurances of a settled determination to 
capture Halifax, and hold the north-eastern fisheries for the East- 
ern states, he thought that all New England would embark in the 
undertaking. We can take Halifax, said he, as easily as we took 
Louisburgh; but then, if we do, we must have assurances that what 
we take is not to be surrendered in any event. It is unnecessary 
to add more here than that such was the plan of the campaign of 
1815, prevented by the peace of December, 1S1 4. Its results would 



73 HALIFAX CAMPAIGN. [JUNE, 1S12. 

have depended on the people of New England and the fortune of 
war. But we had then disciplined armies in considerable numbers, 
.experienced commanders, having confidence in themselves, enjoy- 
ing that of their followers and of the country, a Secretary of the 
Treasury, Dallas, and a Secretary of War, Monroe, who would 
have strained every nerve for great national achievements. Since 
then the British tonnage employed in the North American fisheries 
and trade has quadrupled. More than a million of tons navigated 
by seventy thousand seamen, all — trade,shipping and seamen, con- 
stantly increasing, with the multiplying population, improvements 
and resources of the British American Colonies. British bottoms, 
British subjects, British manufactures, British colonial staples, are 
the transatlantic outworks of that great European fortress in- 
trenched by insular defences in front of the old world, exercising 
immense power over the new. Fully appreciating the military 
advantages of her position, Great Britain is ever on the alert to 
increase and strengthen them ; seizing upon every spot which 
may be rendered available. 

When we come to the naval operations of the war of 1812, 
we shall see that, even wiihout an army, our little squadron, if 
well advised and directed, might have struck a severe, if not fatal 
blow, at English American power, by concentrating its force upon 
Halifax as soon as war was declared, before England was pre- 
pared for it. Co-operating with a land expedition moving from 
Maine on that place, it could hardly have failed. The short- 
sighted schemes of government, lukewarmness in the executive, 
timidity in Congress, the unwarlike spirit of free institutions, the 
unnerving influences of protracted peace, the fears of old com- 
manders, the force of circumstances, ordered it otherwise. Canada 
; was not only not conquered, but not even injured. The English 
^government of it, civil and military, nobly defended its provinces. 
Our efforts, at first, miserable failures, were at last only martial 
exercises, elementary schools in the art of war. 

Instead of striking at the root or stump, we began at the top- 
most branches; tried to hurt the lion in the tail, as General Arm- 
strong objected, when animadverting on the poor difference he 
took between attacking Kingston and York, or Fort George. To 
conquer Canada, General William Hull was sent from his govern- 
ment of Michigan, with a force mostly volunteer and militia, 



CHAP. II.] MICHILIMACINACK. 79 

deemed amply sufficient, as numerically it was, to overcome 
British resistance in Upper Canada, where the provincial militia 
did not wish to fight Americans, if left to their choice, and the 
Indian tribes were so far neutral as to be waiting to join the 
strongest side. By some inexplicable remissness, the enemy got 
intelligence in Canada, at Maiden and elsewhere, of our declaration 
of war, before it was made known to even our own posts. We 
had no force on either of the lakes or waters, where the English 
reigned in undisputed supremacy. On the 17th July, 1812, the 
vital post of Mackinaw, on the island of Michilimacinack, at the 
junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan, was surprised and taken 
by the enemy, almost without resistance. Lieutenant Hancks, 
the officer in command, with a garrison of some fifty to sixty 
regular soldiers, in his report of the 4th of August to General 
Hull, giving an account of this deplorable first blow in the war, 
officially stated that the summons to surrender the fort was the 
first information he had of the declaration of war. With such a 
secretary, post-master general, commander, and other officers, 
was the conflict begun ! Captain Roberts, commanding the 
British post of St. Josephs, a vigilant and enterprising officer, 
whose capture, with his small garrison, should have been our 
first and easy blow, — instead of that, was allowed, with his ina- 
dequate means, to plan and execute the surprize of Mackinaw. 
By this untoward reverse of what should have been the Ameri- 
can outset, the Governor-General Prevost, in his despatch of the 
26th of August, 1812, to the Colonial Secretary, Earl Bathurst, 
was authorized to write that spirit and confidence were given to 
the Indian tribes, part of whom assisted in the capture of the 
American fort, and they were determined to advance upon the 
rear and flanks of the American army as soon as it entered 
Canada. 

The island of Michilimacinack, (or Mackinaw, as it is more 
commonly called,) is situated in the straits between Lake 
Michigan and Lake Huron. It is of a circular form, about seven 
and a-half miles in circumference, between three and four miles 
from the land in the nearest point. The island is a rock of lime- 
stone, covered with a rough and hard but fertile soil, and, origi- 
nally with a heavy growth of timber, such as sugar-maple, beech, 
birch, basswood, poplar, hemlock, cedar and spruce — elevated 
considerably above the mainland in its vicinity, which is low, 



80 MICHILIMACINACK. [AUGUST, 1812. 

flat, and swampy. The island is highest in the centre, and hand- 
somely crowning, resembling, as you approach it at a distance, 
a turtle's back — from which circumstance it is said to have de- 
rived its name, Michilimacinack or the Turtle. 

The fort which stands on the south-east side, was handsomely 
situated on a bluff rock, rising from one hundred to two hundred 
feet from the water, almost perpendicular in many places, extend- 
ing about half round the island. It overlooked, and, of course, 
commanded the harbour, a beautiful semicircular basin of about 
one mile in extent, and from one to five or six fathoms in depth, 
sheltered from Lake Huron by two islands stretching across 
its mouth, and leaving only a narrow ship channel by which to 
enter the harbour. From the fort there was an uninterrupted 
view into Lake Huron to the north-east, and into Lake Michigan 
on the west, entirely commanjled by the high ground in its rear, 
where there was only a stockade defended by two block houses, 
with a brass six pounder in each. There were also two long 
nines on a battery in front, besides two howitzers, and a brass 
three pounder, commanding the approach to the front gate ; a 
good bomb proof magazine, but without much ammunition or 
implements of war. 

It was from the fur trade that the importance of Michilimacinack 
resulted, having long been the grand depot of those carrying it 
on, and the key to all the north-western country. Its commercial 
importance may be estimated from the amount of goods entered 
at the custom-house there, in 1S04, which, including what were 
brought direct from Montreal, and what came by the way of New 
York, yielded a revenue to our treasury of about $60,000. Large 
quantities of corn and sugar raised and manufactured by the 
Indians in the vicinity, and by them brought to market, were 
sold to the merchants, for the support of those engaged, or people 
employed in the fur trade. 

Hull was conquered at Mackinaw : if not before his march 
began, heralded by pompous and threatening proclamation. The 
government was not blameless for his miserable failure, perhaps 
the republic. War for the first time in thirty years; a presidential 
election pending when it was declared ; Congress fearful of their 
popularity; the executive, much of it lukewarm, if not averse to 
hostilities ; all cherishing more hopes of peace than of war ; no mi- 
litary genius, habits or organization, no taxes, short funds, extreme 



CHAP. II.] HULL'S SURRENDER AT DETROIT. Si 

and culpable inefficiency, if not downright negligence in the first 
steps of warfare, were ill-starred premises on which an unfortunate 
leader might lay some of the reproach. Hull's vapouring pro- 
clamation only provoked General Brock, the British commander, 
to confront him; brave, indefatigable, active, energetic, abounding 
in qualifications, all of which Hull, if he ever had, was without 
from the moment he heard of the fall of Mackinaw, the gathering 
of the Indian clans, and the effect of all these things on the English 
militia. His stores and dispatches and baggage were captured 
in a boat. Of two detachments he sent out, one under Major 
Vanhorne, was cut to pieces by Tecumseh; the other under 
Colonel Miller, though successful in defeating an English attack, 
gained, poor Hull wrote to the secretary, nothing but honour, 
and that at the cost of seventy-five lives lost ! Familiarized with 
Indian brutalities, Hull too well knew what he had to fear from 
this always the most formidable and destructive wing of the 
English army. Finding the savages more hostile, the Canadian 
militia less favourable, than he expected, Mackinaw gone, his 
flanks in danger, his rear not open for supplies to be brought on 
pack horses 200 miles through a wilderness of trackless swamps; 
on the 7th of August he began his retreat, benumbed with terror, 
recrossed from Canada to Michigan, and there quailed at Detroit 
till the 15th of that month, the day of his ignominious surrender. 
Hemmed in on every side, cut off from all resource, his force 
wasting with disappointment, and disease, and death ; he was not 
the man for an emergency requiring the best courage and fortitude. 
A man of another mould, full of resolution and resource, might 
have triumphed over the time-serving negligence of his own 
government and the bold resistance of an enemy who could not 
fail to perceive that he had a feeble and dismayed antagonist to 
deal with. The American general was ripe for abject submission 
when Brock became the assailant ; crossing the straits from 
Sandwich to Detroit with some twelve hundred men, the Indians 
led by their brave and skillful chieftain, the gallant and generous 
Tecumseh, much more gallant and humane than many of the 
English commanders. On the 15th of August, Hull put into 
articles of capitulation all he could surrender, without striking a 
blow or showing a sign but of extreme trepidation. No council 
of war was held on this, the only occasion during the war, when 



82 HULL'S SURRENDER AT DETROIT. [AUG., 1812. 

the commanding general would have been outvoted by all his 
officers. 

All Hull's officers were indignant at his surrender. Colonel 
Lewis Cass, at Washington, in September, 1813, in a letter pub- 
lished to the Secretary of War, averred that Maiden might easily 
have been taken if attacked when Hull first entered Canada. 
The Canadian militia disliked the British service and deserted 
by hundreds, while our troops were in excellent order and high 
ardour; but contrary to the unanimous wish of his officers, Hull 
evacuated his camp by night, when there was not even the 
shadow of an enemy to injure us ; abandoning the well disposed 
Canadian militia to English vengeance and control. In the last 
resort the officers resolved on incurring the responsibility of divest- 
ing the general of the command ; and his deposal was prevented 
merely by two of the commanding officers of regiments being 
ordered on detachments. When Brock crossed the strait to attack 
Detroit, his whole force, white, red and black, was but 1030, and 
ours present fit for duty 1350; the superiority of our position was 
apparent, and our troops awaited the enemy in the eager expect- 
ation of victory. The fourth regiment was in the fort„the Ohio 
volunteers and part of the Michigan militia behind pickets in a 
situation in which the whole flank of the enemy would have been 
exposed ; the rest of the Michigan militia in the upper part of the 
town to resist the incursions of the savages. Two twenty-four 
pounders loaded with grape shot were posted on a commanding 
eminence, ready to sweep the advancing column. Not a sign of 
discontent, not a look of cowardice ; every man expected a proud 
day for his country, each anxious that his individual exertion 
should contribute to the general result. When the head of the 
enemy's column arrived within about 500 yards of our lines, orders 
were received from General Hull for the whole to retreat to the 
fort, and for the twenty-four pounders not to fire on the enemy. 
One universal burst of indignation appeared upon this order. 
Shortly after a white liag was hung out upon the walls. A Bri- 
tish officer rode up to inquire the cause. A communication took 
place between the commanding generals, which ended in capitu- 
lation. Hull consulted none of his officers, took counsel of his 
own feelings only. Not one anticipated surrender. Even the 
women were indignant at the shameful degradation. At ten 
o'clock next day the detachment of 350 men from M'Arthur's 



CHAP. II.] HULL'S SURRENDER. 83 

and Cass' regiments sent the day before to the river Raisin arrived 
within sight of Detroit on their return. Colonels M'Arthur, 
Findley, Cass and Miller all declared that nothing could justify 
so dishonourable and unjustifiable a capitulation, which was also 
the universal sentiment among the troops. 

Yet the issue might not have been what Colonel Cass so con- 
fidently hoped. Among all the vicissitudes of life nothing is so 
capricious as what has come to be called the fortune of war. 
In an unpublished letter from an American in London, dated 
December, 1759, giving an account of one of Chatham's speeches 
in Parliament, that extraordinary author of the war and colonial 
policy of Great Britain is stated to have borne the testimony 
of his experience to the terrible uncertainty of military affairs 
above all others. "The events of war," said he, "depend on 
what the world calls chance; a conjunction of incidents which 
short-sighted man cannot foresee or provide for. It is uncertain 
whether the day shall end with acclamations of joy, or the war 
ministers sacrificed to the fury of an enraged multitude for some 
disaster in the system which the world is always ready to impute 
to want of ability or fidelity in those who execute it." Hull, 
however, was lamentably false, at any rate, to one cardinal prin- 
ciple of military affairs, which Chatham, as a war minister, never 
neglected; to be bold, to trust fortune, to woo that capricious 
tutelary deity of hostilities by seizing, almost ravishing, her 
favours. In the several unsuccessful campaigns it cost Chatham 
to conquer Canada from the French, he never was wanting in 
that boldness which is as essential as bravery to success in most 
things, in military more than any other. In the almost con- 
tinual failures of the American arms in Canada throughout the 
years 1812 and 1813 boldness was the great need of every com- 
mander, want of it the infirmity which degraded them all. In 
the tournaments, as they may be considered, the isolated and 
irregular jousts of 1814, when the bravest and best troops of 
Great Britain were beat in every encounter, boldness or audacity 
was the American virtue which gained the day. Owing to the 
radical error of our plan of operations, and the failure to accom- 
plish even the mistaken attempt of the two first years, the British 
were reinforced in the third by numbers which deprived our 
forces of the power of conquest, and limited their invasion to 
the places where it began. Still the effect of bold attacks was 



84 CONQUEST OF CANADA. [AUG., 1812 

excellent. Without conquering Canada they conquered the Eng- 
lish there, and greatly contributed not only to peace, but the 
satisfactory duration of it. Discipline indeed was then an Ame- 
rican virtue, as well as boldness. Without the retrieving of our 
fortunes which the third year of war afforded to remove the de- 
gradation of the first and second years, a history of it would be 
a sad task for any American. Fortunately it ended well. The 
end crowned the work, and the crown was made of intrepidity. 

Treason, as well as cowardice were imputed to General Hull. 
He was tried by court martial, convicted of cowardice, and sen- 
tenced to be shot, but recommended to mercy. Hull was pardoned 
by the president, dismissed from the army, and suffered to live ; 
the only convicted, by no means the only discredited American 
commander foiled in attempts to invade a feeble province, with 
a small margin of population, along the edge of the waters divid- 
ing that country from this ; that population even not well dis- 
posed to English authority, and thickly sprinkled with natives of 
the United States. Panic unnerves the stoutest hearts. Malta 
and Ulm were surrendered to the French, a French army at 
Baylen to the Spanish, not long before Hull ingloriously laid 
down his arms, when there was as little need of it, by like in- 
fatuation. 

Thus in that region our vision of Canadian conquest vanished. 
The whole west, the frontiers of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, 
Virginia, principal war states, were laid bare to English and In- 
dian invasion, subjected to continual alarms and expenses. — 
Instead of conquering Canada as far at least as the Falls of Nia- 
gara, we were as much disappointed, disconcerted, and aston- 
ished, as if that cascade had changed its current, and been thrown 
from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie upwards, by earthquakes or 
other convulsive phenomenon. Such was the revulsion in my 
feelings from overweening confidence to utter amazement. I 
began to fear that war was to ruin us, — felt as if we were all 
prisoners of war. Shame was the garb of the war's supporters, 
joy that of its opponents, with most of whom in Congress, the 
press, and every where a favourite position was the injustice 
and madness of foreign war, war of conquest, war on Canada, 
war, however, where only could we carry it with any chance of 
success, instead, as its opponents contended, of confining our 
efforts to the seas, where all parties believed we had no chance 



CHAP. II.l GENERAL THOMAS CRAIG. g5 

at all. Such was the argument of disaffection. It was right, said 
the disaffected, at all events, to withhold supplies from war of 
conquest, war on Canada ; militia had a right to refuse to go 
there; capitalists to withhold loans of money. The effects of 
Hull's surrender were terrible. He who as a subordinate officer, 
had established character for courage and fortitude, when young, 
by deplorable infirmity when promoted to command, afflicted his 
country with discouragement which might have been fatal, but 
for relief where no one looked for it. They who expect election 
returns or foreign news with anxious anticipation, may form some 
faint idea of the incredulous alternation of fear and hope, which 
awaits war tidings in a country unused to war. When the Hes- 
sians taken by Washington at Trenton, were marched as pri- 
soners of war into Philadelphia, the tories would not believe 
what they saw, but persisted that there must be some mistake or 
delusion about it. 

My first doubt or uneasiness was the suggestion of an old sol- 
dier, whose residence I sometimes visited in the summer season. 
This gentleman raised a full company of a hundred hardy moun- 
taineers, at the first outbreak of the war of the Revolution, and 
marched them, before even the Declaration of Independence, 
through the trackless wilds of northern winter, to join Montgo- 
mery, whose army he did not reach till the day after his defeat 
and death, before Quebec. From that time throughout the war, 
he was everywhere, as the hardest service called, from Long 
Island to Georgia, conspicuous in every battle, at Long Island, 
in Jersey, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Yorktown, 
closing seven years of constant and arduous, yet to him always 
cheerful and pleasant campaigning, at the last action of the war, 
the siege of Savannah : from Quebec to Savannah, never off 
duty, foremost in all encounters ; a soldier in every qualification. 
To robust frame, insensible of fatigue, he joined an intrepid, 
though fiery temper ; and was regularly bred to arms ; a man of 
good education, good manners, gentle when not excited, but then 
fierce and dangerous. At the peace of 1783, disbanded with 
only continental money at a discount of five hundred for one as 
his pay, he returned home ; and having the misfortune to be in- 
volved in a tavern fray, in which he was charged with a homi- 
cide, he withdrew far into the interior, as it then was, behind 
the hills of his native county in Pennsylvania, where he lived 
vol. i. — 8 



86 GENERAL THOMAS CRAIG. [SEPT. 1812. 

many years in total, hospitable, and polite retirement, from the 
world, visited by only a few friends, but holding the commission 
of major-general in the militia. My friend Mr. Richard Rush, 
who as comptroller of the Treasury, though not then, as he after- 
wards became, a minister of Madison's cabinet, was much con- 
sulted by him, enjoyed his entire confidence, and that of Mr. Mon- 
roe. — Mr. Rush and I got Mr. Madison to nominate the old soldier 
to whose memory this passing tribute is devoted, without hisknow- 
ledge, as a brigadier-general in the regular army in 1812; ad- 
vanced in years as he was, he would have done honour to the 
station. He rose from a captain by regular gradation, to be col- 
onel of a regiment in the continental army. Unluckily one of 
his old associates then, who knew the fierceness of his temper, 
and feared the harshness of his discipline, made objections to 
conferring a brigade on him, and the president was prevailed 
upon to withdraw the nomination, for fear of its rejection, then 
too common an occurrence in that discontented conclave. Gene- 
ral Thomas Craig was of the Gates, or anti- Washington party 
of the army of the Revolution; as such, and as a man of high, un- 
compromising temper, had enemies, but fought his way through 
all grades from captaincy, with which he entered the army, to 
the command of a regiment, which, therefore, according to the 
established regulation, entitled him to the nominal rank of gene- 
ral, when he left it at the peace of 1783. To the last of his pro- 
tracted life, which lasted till he was nearly a hundred years old, 
he persevered in two sentiments, which in this country of reli- 
gious and political freedom, however uncongenial with those of 
most persons, no one can deny his right to. One was disrespect 
to Washington, whose talents and military capacity he always 
and utterly denied with unappeasable aversion: the other was 
denial of the divinity of the author of the Christian religion. 
Since Washington's fortunate death and canonization, General 
Craig's infidelity to him has found fewer sympathies probably in 
Europe or America, than the deism which great numbers share 
with him, in whose list many place Penn, Franklin, Jefferson, 
John Adams, and Madison. — Indeed, Washington's opinions, a 
sincerely pious man, on that subject have never been ascertained. 
At General Craig's picturesque residence, trout fishing, pheasant 
shooting, and deer hunting, were among the sports of a welcome, 
always warmly hospitable and highly interesting from his inti- 



CHAP. II.] GENERAL THOMAS CRAIG. g7 

mate and peculiar views of the events, and notabilities of the army 
of the Revolution. He spoke with enthusiasm of Colonel Burr ; 
said that when arrested for treason, he would have cheerfully 
gone to Richmond to attend his trial, or do any thing he could, 
for his vindication. He had the same admiration too of General 
Hamilton, but as strong a dislike to some of the prominent officers 
of the Revolution. General Craig had experience of Indian war- 
fare, and much familiarity with their habits; has shown me great 
numbers of the pointed stone heads to their arrows which were 
scattered over the hills and in the rivulets of his extensive estates ; 
had learned from them to tell with amazing certainty from the 
twist of a bough, the turn of a leaf, or even the position of a peb- 
ble in a run of water, whether a man had passed that way, whe- 
ther on foot or on horseback, alone or with others. This re- 
markable specimen of the giants of the Revolution, lived till 
ninety-five years old, and died a soldier to the last, directing that 
he should be buried, with military honours, volleys of musketry 
fired over his grave, and the other customary ceremonies of mar- 
tial parade on such occasions. Some years before his death, he 
received the provision made by Congress for the officers and sol- 
diers of the Revolution, not, however, without repugnance to 
subscribing to some of the terms prescribed, which he considered 
humiliating. His retired residence has long since been spoiled 
of its natural beauties and attractions by collieries, canals, and 
railroads : anthracite coal, of which, when I was there, no concep- 
tion had been formed, has invited miners into the hills, and crowds 
the streams with busy boatmen. 

It was from this veteran soldier, meeting him at the chief town 
of his county, that I heard with incredulous annoyance the first 
doubts of Hull's success. I had no doubt that he was in full and 
triumphant march from Maiden to Queenstovvn. General Craig 
expressed his apprehensions of the reverse. He knew the difficul- 
ties, the chances, the obstacles in the way ; had attentively read 
all the newspaper accounts of the expedition ; could estimate the 
probabilities of Indian enmity, had experienced the force of 
English armies ; shook his head at my confidence, and cautioned 
me not to be too sanguine. Not from any disparagement of 
Hull, but from the inherent mishaps of military proceedings, the 
fortune of war, this Nestor of another war questioned the suc- 
cess of our outset, and disturbed my dreams of triumph. Our 
three frigates gone to sea were given up to the mighty maritime 



38 CAPTURE OF THE FRIGATE GUERRIERE. [AUG. 1812. 

enemy. But in Canada where our superiority of force was un- 
questionable, General Craig could not prevail on me to harbour so 
unpatriotic, so unpopular, so unworthy an apprehension as the 
possibility of reverse. We were to make amends for distress at 
sea by sweeping triumphs ashore. It was in this mood I was 
stunned by tidings of Hull's surrender. Its disappointment, dis- 
grace, despondency and mortification were blessedly counteracted 
by the capture of the Guerriere frigate by the other Hull, of which 
the news came just in time to be providential relief, saving our 
cause, the union and country from perhaps disruption, certainly 
consequences the most lamentable. General Hull surrendered 
the 15th of August, Napoleon's birth-day. Captain Hull took 
the British frigate which vauntingly challenged combat, on the 
19th of August. Intelligence of these conflicting events met 
together as our northern blasts and southern breezes contend, 
when, after vernal prevalence of wintry weather, balmy refresh- 
ment of temperature succeeds. All was not lost with the little 
army and vast territories abdicated. There was a rainbow over 
the ocean for whose freedom the war was persisted in after re- 
peal of the orders in council, for the unmolested enjoyments of 
whose peaceable intercourse we encountered all the fearful odds 
of the contest. A stream of transcendent successes by sea, which 
Great Britain could neither turn nor explain, set in, revived, con- 
soled and upheld that maritime and commercial portion of the 
United States where support of the war was weakest and oppo- 
sition to it most revolting. Not only public ships, but privateers 
struck terror into the English marine, commercial and naval ; re- 
newed the coast alarms which Paul Jones excited in the Revolu- 
tion; annoyed the channel trade, increased the rates of insurance; 
even without the conquest of Canada, maintained Madison's ad- 
ministration in authority, secured his re-election, and enabled 
Congress to meet in the ensuing spring with majorities and re- 
solution to prosecute war as the only way to peace. 

General Hull's vindication submitted by his letter, dated De- 
troit, the 26th of August, 1812, to the Secretary of War, pleaded 
the loss of Mackinaw, and thereby the unexpected hostility of 
all the Indian tribes, headed by Tecumseh, Marpot, Logan, 
Walk-in-the- Water, Split-log, &c, the privation of all water power 
by which his communication with the place of his supplies be- 
came only land-carriage, on pack-horses, through a wilderness of 
two hundred miles,only 800 troops at Detriot when he surrendered, 



CHAP. II.] GENERAL HULL'S TRIAL. gg 

owing to detachments sent away under Colonels M'Arthur and 
Cass, many sick, and all dispirited, the fort filled with women, 
children and aged persons, (among whom, I believe, though not 
mentioned by him, were several ladies of his own family,) the 
place open and exposed, effectually battered by the enemies can- 
non, no alternative but to stand an assault thus situated, or to 
take the field and fight with a force inferior to either the British 
or Indians, much inferior to them both combined ; powder and 
provisions nearly exhausted, Indians without number and with- 
out remorse, the spectres continually haunting his fancy and fo- 
menting his fears. He assumed the whole responsibility of the 
surrender. The brave officers, he said, and men he commanded 
would have fought till their last cartridge was exhausted, and 
every bayonet worn to the socket. There was at least, magnani- 
mity in this confession, however weak the argument. 

The most decisive testimonial against Hull was Brock's letter to 
Prevost, written at the moment of his incredible success, dated 
Detroit, 16th of August, 1812, a miniature but pregnant volume 
of proof that Hull was panic-struck. " I hasten to apprize your 
excellency of the capture of this very important post. 2500 troops 
have this day surrendered prisoners of war, and about twenty-five 
pieces of ordnance have been taken without the sacrifice of a drop 
of British blood. I had not more than 600 troops including militia, 
and about 600 Indians to accomplish this service. When I detail 
my good fortune your excellency will be astonished." At Sin- 
clair's retreat from Ticonderoga, Hull's cool courage was re- 
markable ; at Wayne's storming of Stony Point his ardent intre- 
pidity was signalized. Age and thought had changed the ardour 
of twenty into feeble anxiety near the grand climacteric. In 
1777, he would have fought or died without care ; in 1812, with 
not much of life left, he was fearful of losing that little. 

A feature in the proceedings against Hull, which merits his- 
torical mention as part of the philosophy of American institu- 
tions, is the connection with them of an eminent personage, then 
just beginning, by a wise and successful course of public promo- 
tion, his advancement from humble outset to the highest eleva- 
tion. Alexander James Dallas, who was Secretary of the Trea- 
sury next year, was appointed Judge Advocate of the court 
martial convoked to try General Hull. Mr. Dallas, not finding it 
convenient to attend the court, Mr. Martin Van Buren was 

8* 



90 BATTLE OF QUEENSTOWN. [OCT. 1812. 

substituted for him, and performed the duty. Soon after, when 
General Wilkinson was tried by court martial, Mr. Van Buren 
was again appointed special judge advocate for that court. 
General Wilkinson objected to any special judge advocate, and 
presented his objection to the court, who sustained it, and re- 
jected Mr. Van Buren. These were among the first steps of a 
statesman, soon raised to be Senator of the United States, Go- 
vernor of New York, Secretary of State of the U. States, then 
Minister to England, Vice-President and President, in rapid suc- 
cession of advancement ; superseded at last in the chief magis- 
tracy by one of the distinguished officers of the war of 1812, 
General Harrison, after succeeding another in that station, Gene- 
ral Jackson. Mr. Van Buren is now one of the influential digni- 
taries of the country, enjoying much of its confidence and respect, 
after enjoying most of its honours. 

Every proper spirit engaged in prosecuting the war was roused 
by Hull's disgrace to exertion to make amends for it. In this 
generous ardour the commander of the forces on the Niagara 
frontier made a brave and not injudicious attempt to prevent the 
first year of the war from closing so disgracefully; which attempt, 
however, while it did honour to the courage of American soldiery, 
added little to our military assurance, and exposed the militia, 
some of them at least, to contempt and degradation. The gen- 
tleman in command on that frontier was General Stephen Van 
Rensselaer, of the New York militia, of amiable manners, excel- 
lent character and disposition, large fortune, and laudably emu- 
lous of distinction ; but with energy unequal to his difficult task. 
" The national character," he wrote to the commander-in-chief, 
General Dearborn, in October, 1812, "is degraded, and the dis- 
grace will remain corroding the public feeling and spirit, until 
another campaign, unless it be instantly wiped away by a bril- 
liant exploit of this." Accordingly, General Van Rensselaer deter- 
mined wisely, on military as well as politic considerations, to cross 
the Niagara into Canada, storm the British entrenchments on 
Queenstown heights, where they had but a small force, wipe away 
as he said, part of the score of our disgrace, get excellent bar- 
racks and winter quarters, and at least be prepared for another 
campaign next year. The season was far advanced, middle of 
October, the weather wet, stormy and unfavourable, the stream 
though narrow, rapid, and a sheet of eddies, the means of trans- 
port few, nor under good order. 



CHAP. II.] BATTLE OF QUEENSTOWN. gj 

General Alexander Smythe commanded at Buffalo, only a few 
miles from General Van Rensselaer, 1500 men of the regular 
army ; but as I was informed by a highly respectable officer of 
that army still living, was not invited to take part in the projected 
descent upon Canada and battle of Queenstown, lest the glory of 
the day should be taken from General Van Rensselaer's cousin, 
Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, an officer in the militia, both the 
Van Rensselaers being perhaps laudably, though, as it turned out 
unfortunately, bent on monopolizing the credit of this affair for 
the militia, if not exclusively, at any rate in preference to the 
regular army. The jealousy of corps is as common as that of 
individuals. Invidious feelings mostly prevail between regular 
troops, volunteers and militia, army and navy, and as will pre- 
sently appear, the failure of the most extensive and formidable 
expedition undertaken during the war of 1812, is more ascribable 
to the implacable jealousy of the two commanders Wilkinson 
and Hampton of each other, than to any other cause. Solomon 
Van Rensselaer, then adjutant-general of the militia of New York, 
had fought and been wounded in Wayne's expedition against the 
Indians in 1794, was a man of great courage, and having more 
military experience than almost any officer of the regular army in 
that neighbourhood, his kinsman, the general, committed no very 
great impropriety by placing him at the head of the descent upon 
Canada, which, by the same stroke, was to redeem the character 
of the country and of the militia. It was headed by Colonel 
Van Rensselear and Colonel Chrystie of the regular troops, with 
equal numbers of militia and regulars. Before day both parties 
embarked, but Colonel Van Rensselear alone effected the landing 
of his party on the Canada shore sometime before Colonel Chrys- 
tie with his. Van Rensselaer gallantly led his men to the charge 
in spite of all resistance, and though four times severely wounded 
pushed on as far as he could, soon joined by Chrystie, Captain 
Armstrong of the regulars, I believe, a son of the secretary of 
war next year, Captain Ogilvie, Captain Machesney, Captain 
Totten, now colonel of the corps of Engineers, Captain Wool, 
now brigadier general, and other officers of the regular army, Cap- 
tain Gibson, after wards colonel of a rifle regiment killed at the sortie 
from Fort Erie, and Colonel Fenwick, who also contrived to get 
over the river, and were engaged in the enterprise. The stream 
was extremely difficult, the boatmen mere hirelings, under no other 



92 MILITIA MUTINY. [OCT. 1812. 

control than pay and fear ; the officers one and all inexperienced, 
and it would be neither profitable nor perhaps possible to describe 
the day's confused proceedings intelligibly. The advance, those 
who first effected a landing, stormed the English entrenchments ; 
in the endeavour to rally his men to retake them just at break of 
day, the English General Brock was killed, and his volunteer aid- 
de-camp Colonel McDowell, of the provincial militia, attorney- 
general of the province. General Brock was a Guernsey man, and 
fell from his horse by a shot in the breast, cheering on his soldiers. 
The carnage was great in proportion to numbers : several of our 
officers were killed and many more wounded, among the rest Colo- 
nel Fenwick, shot in the head and hand severely. There was cou- 
rage enough, as usual, but little conduct. Our officers had not yet 
learned their parts, and the militia behaved, most of them, infa- 
mously. General Wadsworth, of the New York militia, a gentle- 
man of fortune, who, like General Van Rensselaer, though opposed 
to the war, turned out with alacrity to carry it on even offensively, 
(the line is evanescent between offensive and defensive wars,) 
crossed over to Canada during the fighting, and took the command 
there ; his object being to set the militia a good example, who 
were beginning not only to refuse to cross, but some who had 
done so, returning to our side. General Van Rensselaer with 
similar intentions passed over into Canada during the day, not 
having gone with the vanguard. At one time it seemed as if we 
were victorious, but General Sheaffe, who succeeded Brock in 
command of the enemy, marched up reinforcements of regular 
soldiers along the margin of the river from Fort George, while 
the Indian clans, that never-failing resource of English warfare, 
hurried up from Chippewa. At this stage and prospect of affairs 
our militia on this side mutinied, absolutely and altogether refus- 
ing to cross. The aspect of things soon changed when General 
Van Rensselaer considered the victory won, and mainly by militia. 
It was a day of more than usual disorder, though nearly every 
battle is much less methodical than accounts of it. Lieutenant 
Colonel Scott had come a volunteer from Buffalo, with two pieces 
of artillery brought in a boat, as the road was impracticable, 
conducted by Lieutenant Roach. Both these young men, in full 
uniform, were so resolved on having part in the battle, that, al- 
though ordered back, they persevered, and got over the river 
almost in spite of interdict, where Scott with his guns drove back 



CHAP. II.] AMERICAN DEFEAT. 93 

the Indians. It was that gallant officer's first engagement, and 
his most unfortunate ; for he was taken prisoner, and with many 
more marched first to Montreal, then Quebec, a spectacle for the 
enemy. Sheaffe's forces far outnumbering ours on the Canadian 
side, while we had an all-sufficient number on this who would 
not cross, after marching about our people for some time reconnoi- 
tering, Sheaffe finally attacked and routed them. They fled to the 
shore, but their boats were gone. General Van Rensselaer who, 
in the course of the day crossed over, had returned when he heard 
of the demur of the militia to follow, leaving General Wadsworth 
in command. Riding among the miscreant militia, with some of 
their officers and Judge Peck to second him, the disheartened and 
disgusted general, Van Rensselaer, in vain tried to prevail on 
them to pass the river and secure the victory won ; one-third of 
them would do it, he assured them. But neither order, reason, 
persuasion nor shame had any effect. They had constitutional 
objections to extra-territorial service. Fifteen hundred able- 
bodied-men, well armed and equipped, shortly before clamorous 
with prowess and untameable spirit, now put on the mask of 
lawfulness, as General Armstrong said, to hide their cowardice. 
Militia are like what is said of women : various and mutable, 
excellent or execrable, according to the mood, as valour, or panic, 
or any other predominant feeling dictates. The militia returns 
for 1813 gave 720,000 men in the United States ; many of them 
descendants of those who at Saratoga, Bunker Hill, King's moun- 
tain and other places displayed as much fortitude as courage. But 
on this occasion, Van Rensselaer's excluding the regulars, if he 
did so for the honour of militia, had terrible retribution. All he 
could do was to send a supply of ammunition to Wadsworth with 
a message leaving it optional with him whether to resist or retreat, 
as he chose. Wadsworth could do neither. Surrender nearly 
unconditional was all he could do or get for his troops, who from 
before day in the morning till late in the afternoon had been 
constantly engaged. They did not yield at once without a sharp 
conflict, however ; but panic seized some of the militia, and com- 
plete rout soon took place instead of orderly retreat, a movement 
beyond the discipline of unpractised troops. Rushing to the 
shore and finding no boats, many brave men had no alternative 
but to surrender on the enemy's terms. An armistice of three 
days, however, was arranged, and the Americans were humanely 



94 MILITIA. [OCT. 1812. 

treated, except in some instances, of what Chrystie, an English- 
man, mentions as terrible slaughter by Indians, whom it was 
impossible to restrain. Of about 1100 fighting men who crossed 
the river, nearly all were killed, wounded or taken. During the 
engagement, the English batteries damaged some on our side and 
the brig Caledonia there. The American prisoners were paraded 
through Canada. Brock and his aid M'Donnel were buried at 
Newark, and minute guns fired from our side during the cere- 
mony, as an act of respect for a brave though dangerous enemy. 
In a few days General Van Rensselaer resigned the command. 
His battle of Qneenstown added another to numerous proofs 
that undisciplined valour, though the basis of all martial success, 
is unavailing without energetic commanders capable of enforcing 
obedience, a virtue as indispensable as valour to ensure victory. 
Without obedience in the soldier and energy in the commander 
an army is but a mob. 

General Van Rensselaer's official letter to Governor Tompkins, 
dated at Buffalo, the 23d of October, 1812, states, that having 
received General Dearborn's permission to resign his command, 
he would proceed immediately to Albany. Meanwhile he men- 
tions as distinguished in the battle of Queenstown, General Wads- 
worth and his aid Major Spencer, Colonel Van Rensselaer, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonels Bloom, Allen, Strahan and Mead, Lieutenant 
Smith and Ensign Grosvenor of Major Moseley's rifle corps ; 
adding, with natural sensibility, that after all the toils and priva- 
tions of a very perplexing campaign, to be obliged to witness the 
sacrifice of victory so gallantly won on the shrine of doubt was 
mortifying indeed. 

At a dinner given that winter, at Washington, to General 
Harrison, his toast was, that a well-organized militia will accom- 
plish great results. But ever since Washington's volumes of 
complaints of them and short enlistments in the Revolution, 
no President, Secretary of War, or any one else, has succeeded 
to organize the militia. Can it be done? Seventy years endea- 
vour have failed. The defeat at Queenstown was not the first, 
though most fatal of their failures. Some of the Pennsylvania 
militia, from Erie, refused to accompany General Harrison into 
Canada, on the constitutional pretext; and others turned back 
after having crossed the line. The Kentuckians had no scruple. 
Militia are a local force everywhere ; not to be marched upon 
foreign conquests, like standing armies of enlisted or conscribed 



CHAP. II.] GENERAL ALEXANDER SMYTHE. 95 

soldiers. But the doctrine was destructive to military operations, 
which asserted that from New York or Michigan to Canada, over 
a river, perhaps an ideal frontier, this force cannot be compelled 
to march. English militia are not transported over sea to Han- 
over, there to fight the king's battles. Even the French National 
Guard, or the German Landwehr are troops appropriated to ser- 
vice within the country. But a right to refuse to go beyond the 
border, was one of the factious dogmas of the war of 1 8 1 2, preached 
by the disaffected of Massachusetts, which, in the event of war 
with the British provinces in that region, might be extremely 
inconvenient ; it was not their doctrine when Pepperell led them 
to the siege of Louisburgh. 

After General Van Rensselaer's departure, General Smythe 
closed the campaign of 1812, in that quarter, by a failure much 
ridiculed and yet vindicated ; at all events a miserable abortion, 
which, in November, instead of atoning for, much increased, our 
discredit of October. On the 10th of November, Smythe issued 
a proclamation " to the men of New York," in which he stated 
that "valour has been conspicuous, but the nation unfortunate in 
the selection of some of those directing it; one army disgracefully 
surrendered, another lost, and sacrificed by precipitate attempts 
to pass it over to their enemies' lines with incompetent means ; 
the cause of these miscarriages apparent — the commanders were 
popular men, destitute alike of theory and experience in the art 
of war. In a few days the troops under my command will 
plant the American standard in Canada, to conquer or to die. 
Men of New York, you desire your share of fame. Then seize 
the present moment. If you do not you will regret it ; say the 
valiant bled in vain, the friends of my country fell, and I was 
not there." This pompous proclamation was soon followed by 
another in similar strain; and a large force from five to six 
thousand men, none apparently disinclined to cross the river, 
were embodied under General Smythe for embarkation. This 
commencement introduced the attempted movement, the entire 
failure of which caused General Smythe, by an act of executive 
power, to be excluded from the regular army, in which he had 
for sometime commanded a regiment before his promotion to a 
brigade. He was deposed without trial, and complained of it, 
as he had a right to do, in a petition presented the following 
December to the House of Representatives by the Speaker. 



96 GENERAL PETER B. PORTER. [NOV. 1812. 

Roger Nelson, of Virginia, of which state General Smythe was, 
moved its reference to a select committee. But, on motion of 
Mr. Troup, chairman of the military committee, it was referred 
to the Secretary of War ; which was delivering the lamb to the 
wolf, as the secretary was the arbitrary power complained of, 
which proved in this instance irresistible, because popular senti- 
ment was with its exercise, which enables the American execu- 
tive sometimes to strike blows and even do wrongs which, in 
less free countries would not be submitted to. The restrictive 
system by which Jefferson endeavoured to prevent war, the war 
itself, and many of Madison's constitutional acts during the war, 
prove that popular government has vast power. 

On the 28th of November an advance was embarked near 
Buffalo under Colonel Winder and Lieutenant-Colonel Boerstler, 
in good boats, manned that time by seamen, commanded by 
Lieutenants Angus and Dudley and Sailing-Master Watts, of 
the Navy, before day-light, without unfavourable weather, one 
of the disadvantages which Van Rensselaer and Chrystie had to 
encounter — a pelting north-eastern storm in that uncomfortable 
season. The soldiers and sailors made good their landing and, 
as on the 13th of October, forthwith carried the British batteries 
by storm. But now, as then, the enemy came upon them from 
distant stations; and with no more help from General Smythe 
than the former vanguard had from the militia, our few adven- 
turers in Canada were soon overpowered, Watts killed, Captain 
King, of the regular army, taken prisoner, the rest getting back to 
our side of the river, as well as they could, in great confusion. Mr. 
Samuel Swartwout, since collector of the port of New York, was 
of this worse than useless expedition. Colonel Boerstler was con- 
sidered the most prominent leader of it, though General Arm- 
strong never thought well of his soldiership, which, next sum- 
mer, came to a discreditable end. General Peter B. Porter, of the 
New York volunteers, who had been a leading member of Con- 
gress when war was declared, and was conspicuous in the Cana- 
dian battles of 1814, was embarked on the 28th of November, 
with two thousand men, ready and eager for action ; in fact half 
way over the river. But General Smythe not only staid him- 
self, as the militia had done in October on the American side, 
with several thousand troops, urgent to cross into Canada in 
November, but prevented any one going to the relief of the ad- 






CHAP. II.] GENERAL SMYTHE. 97 

vance, countermanded the whole expedition ; and the day ended 
in strange inaction. General Porter published General Smythe in 
the newspapers as guilty of cowardice. General Smythe retorted 
through the same medium of offence, accusing General Porter of 
fraud ; declaring that his courage and patriotism were solely 
actuated by gain or loss, as he was contractor to supply the troops. 
Among other recriminations it was said, in fact printed as history, 
that Smythe was confounded by the uproar of the English artil- 
lery, bugles, trumpets, drums, Indian yells, and other concerted 
noises, raised to make the day hideous and fright our general from 
all propriety. He insisted that the contractor's agent had contrived 
to raise the clamour against him, finding the contract a losing one, 
and wishing to see the army in Canada that he might not be bound 
to supply it. He was anxious for the invasion, he said, but wrote 
to General Dearborn, " I must not be defeated." He averred 
that he called together the officers commanding corps of the 
regular army, and they unanimously decided against proceeding. 
The troops were in tents, sickly, the volunteers not to be de- 
pended upon. Smythe's orders were not to cross without 3000 
men at the same time. The affair at Queenstown, he argued, 
was a caution against relying on crowds on the banks, to look on 
a battle like a play ; if disappointed, to break their muskets ; 
if without rations for a day, to desert. Failing, however, to 
even attempt an invasion heralded by strong condemnation of 
preceding commanders, supported by a large force, and de- 
nounced by the whole population, as a wretched failure, Gene- 
ral Smythe became the scapegoat of the day. Assaulting other 
commanders and comrades by odious disparagement instead of 
the common enemy of all by arms, he could hardly escape such 
retribution. Yielding to the clamour, he appoined first one day, 
then another, after the 2Sth of November, for other attempts at 
invasion ; the troops were ready, the volunteers embarked ; Peter 
B. Porter in a leading boat, with a flag, to show that he was 
foremost. But General Smythe, to universal disappointment, 
chagrin, and indignation, again and finally revoked the whole 
proceeding, ordered the volunteers to go home, the regular 
troops into winter quarters, Canada let alone; and another unfor- 
tunate general, never tried but in the public journals, and by 
common opinion, was actually driven away to be no more heard 
of, mobbed by the militia and populace, not without strenuous 
vol. i. — 9 



98 GENERAL DEARBORN. [NOV. 1812. 

vindication by himself and others in the newspapers, but with- 
out favour or further employment. General Smythe after the war 
represented one of the Virginia districts in Congress. Instead 
of a battle with the English, his military career ended in a duel 
with General Peter 13. Porter, who accepted Smythe's challenge 
to that trial of courage. On the 13th December, 1812, the Buffalo 
Gazette published a communication from Colonel Wm. H. Win- 
der, and Lieutenant Samuel H. Angus, the seconds, by which it 
appeared that the two generals repaired that day to Grand 
Island and exchanged a shot, in an intrepid manner by both, 
without effect. It was then represented by General Smythe's 
second that General Porter must be convinced that his charge of 
cowardice was unfounded, and after explanation, it was retracted. 
General Smythe then said that he knew nought derogatory to 
General Porter's character as a gentleman and officer ; the hand 
of reconciliation was offered and received, and the seconds con- 
gratulated the public on the happy issue. The public would 
have preferred a battle in Canada. 

Besides the unlucky battle of Queenstown, and still more 
discreditable abortion of the last attempt in that quarter, there 
remains nothing to tell of that year's campaign but General 
Dearborn's miscarriage, more inexplicable and mortifying than 
all, in the neighbourhood of Lake Champlain. There were other 
slight eructations of combat on that frontier, border outbreaks 
hardly worth mentioning. On the 19th October, Colonel Pike 
tried an incursion into Canada, assaulted an English post, burned 
a block house, and returned without Joss. On the 22d October, 
Captain Lyon captured forty English at St. Regis, going with dis- 
patches from the governor-general to an Indian tribe, took all their 
baggage and dispatches, together with a stand of colours ; our first 
trophy on land after five months disastrous warfare. This stand 
of colours was taken by William M. Marcy, now Secretary of 
War ; the prisoners were the first, (not retaken,) captured on land, 
so that the first colours and the first prisoners of the war were 
captured by volunteers. On the 23d November, at Salmon river, 
not far from St. Regis, the enemy captured a couple of our officers 
with some forty men and four boats. The crowning act of our 
military misdeeds that year, absurd end of all, was Dearborn's, 
the feeblest of all the attempts at invading Canada. Henry 
Dearborn, of Massachusetts, who had served with repute in the 



CHAP. II.] GENERAL DEARBORN. 99 

war of the Revolution, and was Secretary of War during Jeffer- 
son's administration, appointed senior commander of our armies 
for the war of 1812, was a man of large bodily frame, who 
enjoyed the respect of the officers serving under him, as attested 
by their valedictory when he was removed from command 
of the northern army at Fort George in July, 1813. It was 
General Dearborn's misfortune to have an army to form, an 
inexperienced, not over-ardent executive, a Secretary of War 
constrained to resign, a Senate inclined to distrust the Executive, 
Congress withholding taxes and supplies for near twelve months 
after war was declared, waiting upon a presidential election, 
disaffected states, Dearborn's own state, Massachusetts, at the 
head of disaffection, a country destitute of military means and 
men, unaccustomed to restraints, and impatient for exploit. 
These were disadvantages for General Dearborn, which history 
would be unjust not to acknowledge, whatever hasty judgment 
was passed upon him at the moment. Perhaps if more time 
had been allowed, some of the veteran commanders would have 
done better. But there appeared to be a want of alacrity, of 
activity, a torpor about Dearborn's movements which induced 
getting rid of him, it may be with unjust precipitation. Expe- 
rience of veteran generals, however, was as instructive of their 
unfitness for command, during most of that war, as of raw re- 
cruits. Men qualified to command are always extremely rare- 
Great generals are like great poets; they appear but once in a 
series of ages ; like poets, too, they must be born generals. Genius 
is indispensable for command. No art will supply its place. The 
exfoliation of generals was unintermitting during the first two 
years of the war. Throughout the autumn of 1812, General 
Dearborn had his own time, with adequate means to prepare 
an army of five or six thousand troops, whom if it had been 
only to keep them from measles, camp fever, and other diseases 
with which they were afflicted, it was better to put in motion 
somewhere and somehow on Lake Champlain, even as demon- 
stration to keep Prevostfrom strengthening Brock and Sheaffe on 
the Niagara. Dearborn had the largest discretion from the war 
department to employ troops of any and every sort, hire boats, 
and otherwise prepare for action, and positive orders to act 
offensively as soon as possible. He had more than 3000 regular 
troops, Chandler's and Bloomfield's brigades of infantry, with 



100 DEARBORN'S FAILURE. [NOV. 1812. 

adequate numbers of cavalry, field, and light artillery, two 
thousand Vermont and one thousand New York militia, and 
might have had more, if deemed necessary, all well provided, 
even with specie to pay for what they should want in Canada. 
Some estimated the British force on the Canadian Peninsula 
formed by the rivers Sorel and St. Lawrence, including the 
garrisons at Isle Aux Noix, St. Johns, and Chambly, at more 
than General Dearborn's force. But General Armstrong insists 
that it did not exceed 3000 altogether, to protect 900 miles in 
extent, and the provincial militia ought not to have been better 
than ours. The Aurora newspaper, of Philadelphia, edited by 
Colonel Duane, an officer of Jefferson's appointment into the 
regular army, probably derived its information from General 
Bloomfield, a worthy gentleman, who, like nearly every one of 
our revolutionary generals, after insignificant service in the war 
of 1812, was content to stay near home, and commanded at Phila- 
delphia. The editor of the Aurora, on the 23d November, 1812, 
announced that, pursuant to determination in a council of war, 
with the utmost unanimity after due consideration of the means 
and objects, the advance of the northern army, amounting to 
nearly 6000 men in force for active operation, moved under 
Brigadier-General Bloomfield, from their position at Plattsburg, 
destined for Canada. " The army," said this semi-official an- 
nouncement, "must have entered the enemy's country about the 
20th, and three days will have brought the troops to conflict, 
unless the British make war like the Russians. The gallantry 
and fidelity of the militia Green Mountain boys and brave 
Yorkers will save them from the reproach cast upon the hitherto 
boasted bulwark of the republic by the brutality and cowardice 
displayed by idle spectators at Queenstown,and put to shame the 
faithlessness and treachery of neighbours in Massachusetts." So 
ran this editorial preface to Dearborn's failure, like Smythe's pro- 
clamation, premising the farce performed at the same time, on the 
Niagara. On the 17th November the commander of the Canadian 
forces in that vicinity, a major of the voyageurs, received intelli- 
gence at St. Philips, that Dearborn, 10,000 strong, was approach- 
ing Ode! town, and dispatched a couple of companies of that force, 
with three hundred Indians to the river Lacole; soon followed 
by other companies of voyageurs, together with as many chas- 
seurs as could be hastily raised from the neighbouring parishes. 



CHAP. II.] GENERAL DEARBORN. 101 

On the 20th, in the morning, a captain visiting the picquet guard 
discovered our fourteen hundred regulars, with a troop of cavalry 
and a company of militia, led by Colonel Pike, advancing into 
Canada. A confused and incomprehensible skirmish ensued, in 
which each party's object seemed to be to get away from the 
other, till the Americans, in the dark, mistaking themselves for 
enemies began to fire on each other, killed four or five and 
wounded as many of themselves, and then returned leaving their 
dead behind, which Indians never would have done. Where 
Generals Dearborn, Chandler, and Bloomfield were during this 
wretched foray, did not then appear, nor can be now told. On 
no occasion did General Dearborn ever lead his troops into 
action. After this check, he led his 6000 men back to winter 
quarters, Chandler's brigade at Burlington, and Bloomfield's at 
Plattsburg, there to rot and die of the distempers of military 
idleness, the worst form of that worst of all distempers. 

Jefferson, however, did not select Dearborn for Secretary of 
War, in which department his economy and regularity were re- 
markable, nor Madison appoint him commander-in-chief of the 
army without reason. Bred to medicine, he was early and 
active, brave and exemplary in the field, from first to last in the 
war of the Revolution ; commanded a company at the battle of 
Bunker Hill, volunteered in the severe expedition with Arnold 
to follow Montgomery to Quebec, where Dearborn was taken 
prisoner, was in the battles of Trenton, Princeton and Monmouth, 
at the siege of Yorktown, and on all occasions a meritorious offi- 
cer when young. 

On this occasion, again, the militia were infected by the leprosy 
of constitutional right — to refuse orders to wage war as its ap- 
pointed chiefs ordain. Of the 3000 militia who marched with 
Dearborn for Canada, nearly all refused to cross the line, in- 
cluding a company who advanced with Pike but halted at the 
very border. Aimey's dragoons, of Saratoga — a place forever 
glorious in the annals of militia and volunteers, which gave us 
Franklin's treaty with France that crowned the war of the Revo- 
lution with the capture of Cornwallis— two hundred men under 
Major Smith, of Plattsburg, and Major Young, of Troy, Birdsall's 
Riflemen, of Waterwick, Lyon's Troy Invincibles, Highby's Troy 
Fencibles, and Warner's company, with a few more of the irre- 
gular force, were honourable exceptions to the dastard disaffection 



102 END 0F CAMPAIGN OF 1812. [DEC. 1812. 

which thinned our ranks, demoralized our armies, and largely 
contributed to frustrate the campaign of 1812. But General 
Dearborn had regular troops enough at least to have taken the 
Isle Aux Noix, the key to Canada, when he retreated, or at any 
other time during that season. There were few, if any, British 
regular troops opposed to him. Provincial substitutes, French in 
their habits, language and aversion to English, (whom, however, 
the governor-general of the province, Prevost, displayed excellent 
talents for conciliating, commanding and animating with a spirit 
of local resistance to invasion,) voyageurs, traders, travellers, 
Indians, were our chief antagonists and English reliance. En- 
countered at the threshold by such insignificant obstacles, dis- 
couraged probably by militia defection, when he should with 
his regular forces have established himself at Isle Aux Noix for 
the winter, at least threatening Montreal, if not making good his 
way there and holding it, for such success would have rallied 
thousands to his standard, General Dearborn fell back, after a 
failure, the climax of our military degradation for that year. In 
1814 the reverses of 1812 and 1813 were atoned for by brilliant 
feats of arms, though still barren of Canadian conquests. 

The campaign of 1812 ended in total eclipse, without a gleam 
of consolation ; Dearborn's, the last and most inexplicable of all 
its miscarriages. Hull's incomprehensible surrender was alarming 
and terrible ; the battle of Queenstown a discomfiture not entirely 
without solace ; Smythe's ridiculous balk at least provoking; but 
the commander-in-chief's miscarriage, without even heroism of 
disaster, afflicted the friends of war with conviction that they 
were doomed to defeat. With all indulgence to the commanders 
of 1812 and 1813, it was not only right to supersede but censure 
them, as their faults were made known. The English generals 
had much greater difficulties to contend with for defending Ca- 
nada than our's to conquer it. Bonaparte's splendid career of 
Italian triumphs, Wellington's in Spain, began with and over- 
came much greater similar disadvantages. Such was the case 
with Washington in the North and Greene in the South. It is 
nearly always so. Generals must overcome hindrances, priva- 
tions and prejudices inflicted by their own constituents, harder of 
management than to subdue enemies in arms against them. A 
man of talents leading our armies to Montreal, as might have 
been done in 1812, would probably have brought the war to an 



CHAP. II.} END OF CAMPAIGN OF 1812. JQ3 

end that year. England was completely surprised by and unpre- 
pared for it. Such a general at Detroit, Niagara, or Champlain 
as would have driven the English beyond Montreal, might have 
produced immediate peace. As soon as the orders in council were i 
repealed, England tendered it in full confidence that we would 
agree, for the question of impressment was not incapable of ac- 
commodation even while Great Britain remained a belligerent 
nation. The prince regent's speech to Parliament the 7th Janu- 
ary, 1813, was pacific: he expressed regret at unadjusted diffi- 
culties with the United States of America, assuring both Houses 
that all means of conciliation would be employed consistent with 
the honour and dignity of the crown, and the maritime and com- 
mercial rights of the British empire. Hull and Dearborn, and 
executive inefficiency, were answerable for prolonging the war, 
the vigorous and successful commencement of which might have 
creditably closed it soon after it began. The feeling of haughty 
power did not then stimulate Great Britain which followed the 
downfall of Napoleon next year. The time for war was fortunate 
for us, our chance of success good, had either the government 
or its military agents in command made the most of the oppor- 
tunity. But the soldiery were demoralized by incapable com- 
manders, in mortifying apprenticeship to the art of war for two 
years, of transcendent successes by sea, which, if accompanied 
by something like them by land, might have prevented that 
noviciate. A free country paid in war for the liberty enjoyed 
in long peace. Free people will not bear the restraints and ex- \ 
pense of military organization in peace. Since the declaration 
of American Independence, however, all experience in the Old 
World, as well as the New, proves that disciplined freedom is 
eventually an overmatch for despotic discipline. The most ab- 
solute governments have found it so. The problem to be solved 
is, how much liberty is consistent with national safety. The pro- 
gress of the United States in military science and equipment since 
the war of 1812, has been much greater than from the peace of 
1783 till then. Oppression provoked that war, and tribulation 
was its lesson. But if war by a martial people, disorganized at 
first, is to succeed at last, is not excessive liberty preferable to 
extreme discipline ? The end crowns the work. Men must be 
disciplined to obedience and harmony, to unity of action, in order 
to succeed. How much liberty they will bear, how much disei- 



104 PHISOSOPHY OF WAR. [DEC. 1812. 

pline they need, are the great questions. The navy, by perfect 
discipline, never failed. The army, without discipline, never tri- 
umphed. Voluntary government, voluntary religion, voluntary 
hostilities are American experiments, which, according to Jeffer- 
son's argument of relative good, have thus far withstood foreign 
aggression, maintained domestic peace, escaped civil war, and 
advanced the arts of civilization. By happy mixture of con- 
straint with independence, law and liberty, the United States 
stand now among the primary powers of the world : to which 
elevation the war of 1812, with its preliminary reverses and 
postliminious successes, largely contributed. It may long remain 
matter of controversy and disputed political science, whether 
republican government is as strong as others. That war esta- 
blished beyond dispute its capacity for war under difficult and 
trying circumstances; which seem to have been ordained to 
prove and vindicate by early misfortune the unconquerable 
spirit, aptitude, versatility, and resource of a free people. 






CHAP. III.] CONGRESS. 105 



CHAPTER III. 

CONGRESS.— SPECIAL SESSION OF 1813.— TAX BILLS.— JOHN W. EPPES. 
—JAMES PLEASANTS.— JONATHAN ROBERTS.— TIMOTHY PITKIN.— 
WILLIAM W. BIBB.— HUGH NELSON.— PREPARATION FOR WAR.— PEN- 
SIONS.— PRIVATEERS.— SECRET SESSION.— MR. GALLATIN'S NOMINA- 
TION. 

The session of Congress began the 24th of May, 1813. On the 
10th of June, the chairman of the committee of Ways and Means, 
Mr. Eppes, with permission of the House, reported relative to a 
well-digested system of public revenue, and, on motion and leave 
presented the tax bills; viz., for the assessment and collection of a 
direct tax on lands and slaves, a salt tax, on licenses to retailers, 
carriage tax, still tax, on auctions, on refined sugar, on stamps, 
on foreign tonnage, further provision for the collections, and a bill 
to establish the office of commissioner of the revenue. All these 
bills, were, as usual, read the first and second time, by their titles, 
that day, and committed to a committee of the whole House. On 
the 22d of June, the House took them up in committee, Hugh 
Nelson of Virginia, in the chair, and they were successively 
passed through the regular stages of enactment. In about a 
month, by the latter end of July, this considerable body of acts 
received President Madison's signature, and were put in opera- 
tion. 

John W. Eppes, chairman of the committee which performed 
this important function, was the son-in-law of Jefferson, the bene- 
fit of whose confidential correspondence he enjoyed. Mr. Eppes 
was a gentleman of respectable abilities, sincere and manly in his 
sentiments, which were sometimes, however, rather too refined 
for practical application to the emergencies of war. During most 
of this session he was confined by a fit of the gout, which devolved 
on Dr. Bibb, of Georgia, the lead in the committee of Ways and 
Means. Without meaning any disparagement of Mr. Eppes, it 
was, perhaps, fortunate for the tax bills that their passage through 
the House devolved on a member who made no speeches, 



106 CONGRESS. [JUNE, 1813. 

as the chairman was no doubt prepared to do, which would 
have elicited answers and thus consumed time precious for action. 
William W. Bibb, afterwards, I think, Governor of Alabama, 
was a young man, slight of person, feeble in health, taciturn, 
conciliatory, firm, decided in support of the war and Madison's 
administration, who confined what he said on the floor to short 
explanations in answer to objections or questions, without in- 
dulging in any rhetoric. The tax bills, if flooded with debate, if 
not foundered, might have been much hindered : the previous 
question being then a rare application. Dr. Bibb was ably sup- 
ported in the committee of Ways and Means by James Pleasants 
of Virginia, (of which state I believe Dr. Bibb was also a native,) 
one of the most respectable members of that Congress; likewise 
without ever making a speech. He was a kinsman of Jefferson 
and resembled him in the sandy complexion said to indicate an 
enterprising temper. Mr. Pleasants was afterwards Governor of 
Virginia. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, as members of public 
assemblies, filled the highest places without the talent of public 
speaking, so common as to be almost cheap in the United States, 
by no means universal in England, and extremely rare in France, 
where nearly everybody can talk but few speak, which seems 
to be a difference between using the tongue standing or sitting. 
Another member of the committee of Ways and Means and a 
frequent speaker, was Mr. Jonathan Roberts, of Pennsylvania, 
yet living on or near the farm which his family acquired when 
some of them came from England with Penn ; and which Mr. 
Roberts tills with his own hands, while fond of literature and 
well read in polite learning. Mr. Speaker Clay, thorough-going 
in his party politics, took care to construct his committees with 
large administration majorities of all such as might have any 
influence upon the war. The most active member of the mi- 
nority opposed to war and the administration on this committee, 
was Mr. Timothy Pitkin, of Connecticut, a gentleman well 
known for his statistical and historical attainments and works. 
He too was a frequent and able speaker, decided in his opposi- 
tion, but temperate and fair. Hugh Nelson, who presided as 
chairman during the consideration of the tax bills, was remarka- 
bly conversant with the rules and usages of a deliberative assem- 
bly, son of Thomas Nelson who signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and afterwards by President Monroe's appointment. 



CHAP. III.] CONGRESS. 



107 



American minister in Spain. The war of 1812 was beholden to 
James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay, James Pleasants, 
John W. Eppes, William W. Bibb, and Hugh Nelson, all, if I am 
not mistaken, natives of Virginia, not to mention others, for emi- 
nent services in elevated stations. Mr. Nelson represented the 
district where three successive presidents were born ; of the red 
earth, John Randolph said, fruitful of chief magistrates. The 
ancient dominion, as that state is called, has been a mother of 
several others, fruitful of political axioms and principles, and was 
powerfully represented in all branches of government during the 
war. 

The thirteenth Congress convened by the president in special 
session to impose taxes, represented a sparse people, only twenty- 
five on an average to the square mile, scattered over disjointed 
territories two thousand miles square; only eight millions altoge- 
ther, white, red, and black ; for thirty years plunged in the pursuit 
of gain, unused to restraint, unbroken to taxation, which they had 
never felt but to resist from the first day of the Revolution in 1775. 
Tried with all the power of Washington's administration, it was 
resisted by rebellion. Continued under that of Adams, further 
rebellion ensued ; and taxes were the means by which that ad- 
ministration was overthrown. Always no better than a necessary 
evil, taxes in England required war for their imposition. The 
war of the American Revolution was waged almost without 
them, like that of France, by paper money. Throughout the 
war of 1812, among all the difficulties this was not one. Whether 
the twelfth Congress could have laid taxes without overthrowing 
Madison's administration may be a question. But the thirteenth 
Congress did so without hesitation or hindrance, doubled them 
as occasion required, and they were always punctually paid in 
even the most disaffected parts of the United States. Yet it is 
not to be wondered at that wise men feared the experiment. The 
short-lived representatives of a self-governed people are apt to be 
a people-fearing House of Representatives. Mr. Gallatin might 
well infer from all the taxation experience of the world, espe- 
cially that of the American Revolution, and the administrations of 
Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, that Congress must be timid, 
selfish, parsimonious, and unstable : less disposed as they gene- 
rally are than their constituents for measures of decision. The 
federal constitution, however, is in this respect, much stronger 



108 TAXES. [JUNE, 1813. 

and better government than the confederation. By that, members 
of Congress eligible for but one year, and ineligible but for three 
years out of six, revocable at all times by vote of their state legisla- 
ture, had no authority to act directly upon the community for reve- 
nue, but were obliged to approach the people through the mostly 
impenetrable hindrance of state legislation. Early impressions of 
popular and state power, of representative dependence and timi- 
dity, were therefore natural in 1812. Many years afterwards Mr. 
Madison said that, without reference to party opposition, there 
was an inscrutable disaffection, an under toe in Congress he called 
it, somewhere, which baffled his administration at first. Mem- 
bers of Congress of the war party more than whispered that it 
was in his cabinet. But many well inclined to republican govern- 
ment at that time deemed a confederated republic incapable of 
such vigorous and constant action as war required. 

Notwithstanding the awkwardness and discomfiture of the 
commencement of belligerent operations, there was no hesitation 
in Congress, in 1813, to enact a system of taxation, or in the 
people to comply with it. On the contrary, seldom has a session 
of legislation in any country, where the right of free discussion 
prevails, been conducted with more order, system, vigour, or ad- 
vantage than the first session of the Thirteenth Congress, which 
was adjourned the 2d day of August, 1813, after having in seventy 
days accomplished all the objects of the assembly. Law making 
in Congress by legislators from the distant parts of an extended 
country, divided into eighteen sovereign states, with various con- 
flicting local interests, and jarring party politics, sometimes there- 
fore called ambassadors, must be difficult, should be deliberate, 
but is more apt to be precipitate than tardy, as is the common 
reproach. The* majority of the House in that Congress, were 
unanimous, and harmonious. There was some dissidence in the 
Senate ; but hardly any, if any at all, in the House, certainly no 
dissension, among the supporters of the war, whose pressure sup- 
pressed whatever inherent tendency to discord there might and 
must be in such bodies. The opposition was equally united, 
zealous, and active. But to oppose war duly declared, is disad- 
vantage. Its daily events and tidings, whether victories or defeats, 
in which the blood shed flows from a common country, are hardly 
reducible to mere topics of party censure, but mostly must be 
matters of general exultation or universal condolence. Opposition 



CHAP. III.] CONGRESS. 209 

vented itself less against the war, than the manner of carrying it 
on, the place of its transactions, whether it should be Canada or 
the ocean, the officers conducting it, whether veterans or novices, 
the funds for its support, whether contributions which ought to 
be raised from those who denied its justice. The latter was es- 
pecially the great endeavour of opposition. Not many denied the 
justice of the war : but were put to contend that it should include 
France as well as England, or should have been put off for 
fuller preparation. 

The Congress which declared war, appropriated without taxa- 
tion about ten millions to increased armies, three millions to the 
navy, half a million for the defence of maritime frontiers, three 
hundred thousand dollars for repairing ships of war, two hundred 
thousand dollars a year for three years to purchase ship timber ; 
directed the enlistment of ten additional regiments of infantry, 
two of artillery and one of dragoons ; authorized the president 
to embody fifty thousand volunteers, for which purpose a million 
of dollars was assigned; appropriated more than one hundred 
thousand dollars to wards the expenses of six companies of mounted 
rangers, directed a detachment of one hundred thousand men 
from the militia, organized a corps of artificers, regulated the 
ordnance, and otherwise inaugurated hostilities at an expense far 
beyond the regular income of government. Most of these pre- 
liminary enactments preceding or accompanying the declaration 
of war, required that the treasury should be replenished by the 
next Congress, as well as the magazines, by such stable and per- 
manent revenue as would, at least, pay the interest of whatever 
sums might be borrowed ; modern wars being mostly carried on by 
loans, and guarantee of eventual reimbursement of the principal. 
To this object the whole of a short session was devoted, except- 
ing the time consumed by Mr. Webster's resolutions, which will 
be considered, and by other subjects of private or subordinate 
public importance. The season of the year was not favourable. 
The weather at Washingfl^r-was bilious. The president was for 
some time confined to bed byittness, and though I believe no mem- 
ber died during that sultry and anxious session, yet it bore hard 
on those unaccustomed to so relaxing a climate. Local diver- 
gence of opinion obtained, even among the supporters of the war, 
as to the best objects of taxation, and the best mode of taxing 
vol. i. — 10 



HO CONGRESS. [JUNE, 1813. 

them with least inconvenience. But it was no time to differ about 
minor matters. The war occurrences, of which every day's post 
brought news, were, perhaps fortunately, nearly all disastrous; 
Canadian reverses, marauding incursions in Maryland, Dela- 
ware and Virginia, all around Washington, at least no success on 
the western frontier, and the check to naval triumphs by the loss 
of the ill-fated frigate Chesapeake, the whole horizon overcast, 
with scarce a gleam of sunshine; all, as if by overruling Provi- 
dence, operated to bind us firmly together, to subdue murmurs, 
to animate exertions, and to substitute energetic action for idle 
recrimination. The majorities on some of the details of the tax- 
bills were sometimes very small, more than once only one ; a 
vital question on the still-tax was decided by the speaker's casting 
vote. Southern and eastern prepossessions often came into hard 
collision. But on every final question the preponderance was 
imposing, thirty and forty or more votes, and the tax laws went 
to the country with all the effect of such decision. If there was 
detrimental delay in their passage, at any rate, the system was 
better digested by it. 

Langdon Cheves, chairman of the committee of Ways and 
Means, when it was proposed, during the twelfth Congress, was a 
man of information, thoroughly resolved on the absolute neces- 
sity of promptly imposing adequate taxes. The Secretary of the 
Treasury, Mr. Gallatin, was then at his post to afford his import- 
ant advice in devising a plan, even though he might not choose 
to remain and aid in its enactment. The House in 1813 had 
thus the benefit of the labours of the committee and secretary 
in IS 12, whose system was adopted without much change. 

It is so general in the old world, and so common even in the new, 
to decry the order, stability and energy of republican government, 
particularly the legislative department, above all its popular 
branch, supposed to be least capable of methodical transaction 
of business for the exigencies of war, that it is worth while to 
dwell on the refutation of such misapprehension, manifested by 
the proceedings of this short session of Congress. Impeded and 
thwarted as the executive was in many things, and tardy as Con- 
gress were in coming to the performance of their duties, the 
twelfth Congress which declared war, leaving to their successors 
of the thirteenth Congress the responsibility of providing for car- 
rying it on; it is nevertheless the history of that conjuncture, that 



CHAP. III.] CONGRESS. HI 

not only did Congress do as much as could be expected from any 
government, but the House of Representatives was more forward 
than the Senate in so doing. All the tax bills necessarily origi- 
nated in that House, and were there matured, though somewhat 
altered in the Senate. Some war measures, an act much con- 
tested for naturalizing certain alien enemies, some of the army 
and pension bills, the law prohibiting the use of foreign licenses 
for vessels, that relinquishing the claims of government to goods 
captured by privateers, and one or two others of no great import- 
ance, came from the Senate. But the burthen of creative and 
diligent legislation was assumed and borne by the popular branch ; 
less orderly or tranquil than one so much fewer in number as the 
Senate, but also less selfish and factious, more useful in time of 
need, more reliable for republican government. The Senate of 
the United States may be a fitter theatre for personal ambition, 
but in all emergencies, the House of Representatives will proba- 
bly be that of more patriotic and productive legislation. What- 
ever may be modern comparisons between the two Houses, the 
war of 1812 left no reason to prefer that farthest removed from 
the people. It is a common mistake of political theorists to sup- 
pose that American senators, like the English nobility, have pas- 
sions different from the members of a popular assembly ; less lust 
of power, ambition and avarice ; that they require more experi- 
ence, knowledge and stability of character ; that the Senate of 
the United States, as has been said by a learned jurist, guards 
better than the House of Representatives the states from usurpa- 
tion of their authority, and the people from becoming victims of 
paroxysms of legislation. The fancied resemblance of the Ame- 
rican Senate to those of Greece, Rome, or England, is but a fancy. 
As check and balance, the medium of more deliberation, the Se- 
nate is an indispensible department. But the judicial and some 
other attributes bestowed upon it by the constitution, have not 
realized the anticipations of its projectors. Judge Story, in his 
Commentaries, rather censures what he calls Madison's subdued 
praise of it in the Federalist, and indication of more doubt than 
experience justifies. That doubt was the forethought of a pro- 
vident founder in his closet, devising a government of which his 
own judgment was afterwards confirmed, in trying circumstances 
under his own administration; for the war of 1812, especially 
as respected the appointing power of the executive, both at home 



112 CONGRESS. [JUNE, 1813. 

and for foreign service, was much embarrassed and annoyed by 
members of the Senate of the war party, whose constituent states 
supported Madison's administration. Taken altogether, however, 
Congress, in 1813, executed its important functions with intelli- 
gence, promptitude and liberality. 

An English cotemporaneous historical account thus sustains 
these views : — " The extra session of Congress, which concluded 
in August, conducted its business with unaccustomed dispatch, 
and with a degree of unanimity proving that, however reluctant 
a people may be to commence a war, when actually engaged in it, 
and especially when it is brought to their own doors, they will 
generally concur in measures rendered necessary by the circum- 
stances. The establishment of a system of war-taxes capable 
of defraying the interest of the existing debt and of future loans, 
was the principal business of the meeting ; and though there 
were considerable differences of opinion as to the fittest objects 
of taxation, the majority gave their support to the measures pro- 
posed by the committee of Ways and Means. A variety of acts 
were also passed relative to the prosecution and conduct of the 
war, and the provision for widows and orphans ; and greater 
encouragement was given to privateers in respect to prizes. An 
act also passed conformably to the president's former recommen- 
dation, prohibiting the use of British commercial licenses. From 
all these measures may be seen the rapid approach to the condition 
of an old belligerent by a new state, the peculiar felicity of whose 
situation appeared to be that of being placed beyond the sphere 
of perpetual hostility which involves the greatest portion of the 
world." 

So well, indeed, did free institutions and republican govern- 
ment work in a war begun by a country unprepared for it, 
against another so much better mechanically prepared, that no 
contemplative mind can refer to that conjuncture, and the expe- 
rience of all wars, both in America and Europe, since the Ameri- 
can declaration of independence, without at least the pleasing 
doubt whether freedom from burdensome taxation and much 
restraint does not prepare a people for hostilities better than if 
formidably armed, borne down by taxes, and unmanned by sub- 
jection. The revenue of the United States during the years 1812 — 
'13— '14 was never more than about one-sixth of their expendi- 
ture, the other five-sixths being supplied by loans and treasury 



CHAP. III.] ORGANIZATION. 113 

notes; none of it reaching the hands of those to whom it was 
paid but through the worst of all taxation, depreciated currency. 
Yet the loans were obtained without much difficulty, the taxes paid 
without any difficulty at all, and within a few years after the war, 
the whole war debt of some eighty millions of dollars, together 
with forty-five millions before due, was all extinguished. War 
begun without army, navy, or taxes, made them all as it went. 
The beginning, indeed, was disastrous, but must it always be so ? 
Were not most of its disasiers ascribable to veteran officers? In 
peace prepare for war, is a maxim which has become a political 
proverb. Yet a people crushed by taxes, taken from home where 
patriotism has its source in the domestic affections, to be demo- 
ralized in garrisons and disciplined in mercenary servitude, can 
hardly be as well prepared for war as those animated by the 
spirit of liberty and equality, the possession of property and par- 
ticipation in government. Great Britain is never mechanically 
as well prepared for hostilities as France, Austria, and Russia. 
In Europe, moreover, many centuries of inveterate habits of 
national hostility may require the maintenance of large standing 
armies, while in this isolated republic the cheap price paid for 
long peace and perfect freedom, may be less military organiza- 
tion, taxation, and subordination. Within the last seventy or 
eighty years, since the sovereignty of the people has become 
common, war has seldom been successful without popular good- 
will, has seldom failed with that reinforcement. Nearly every 
much taxed and well armed nation of Europe, all the most 
powerful empires, have in turn been conquered, while popular 
enthusiasm has been the last resort of those who most inculcate 
the indispensable necessity of armed organization. The period of 
• our own war saw the vast Russian empire reduced to its mere 
elements, the emperor, a man of talents and popularity, dependent 
upon the lower classes of his people for defence against .>ajf 
a million of completely disciplined soldiery, led by the most 
consummate commander of modern times ; and shortly after, the 
armies which under that commander had taken nearly every 
capital in Europe, submitting to the conqueror's law in their 
own capital, that law imposed by foreign volunteers and militia. 
Exhausted and disheartened people, however well armed and 
commanded, never triumphed in the end, however striking their 

10* 



114 PENSIONS. [JUNE, 1813. 

commencement of hostilities. Aroused and martial nations over- 
came those most disciplined. In Spain the .mere peasantry, if 
Spanish accounts instead of English are believed, expelled the 
most accomplished soldiery and officers of the world. The war 
of 1812, among its lessons, teaches, that liberty and equality are 
at least schools of preparation and discipline in which both armies 
and navies are prepared for great exploits. 

An act of Congress, at the first session of 1813, passed both 
Houses, without dissent, of probably indisputable martial influ- 
ences, whatever costly corollaries it may have led to : to pro- 
vide for the orphans and widows of militia slain or disabled in 
public service. A pension system by which Congress dispenses 
bounties from the national purse, if they are individuated, seems 
to consist with all good government, however liable to abuses. 
Its restriction to military, excluding civil service, is a monarchical 
relic which common sense may not at once appreciate ; especially 
while grants equivalent to pensions for civil services have been 
indirectly obtained for nearly every president who needed them, 
those particularly least favourable to the system. The constitu- 
tionality of military pensions lies buried under such heaps of pre- 
cedents as overwhelm opposition to them, while such men as 
Jefferson and Madison are obliged to take what they get, if any 
thing, by some indirect donation for the purchase of a library or 
a volume of manuscripts. 

Analogous to the pension principle is another act of this ses- 
sion, parent of many spurious offsprings ; making provision for 
wagons and teams destroyed in warfare ; prolific of improper 
gratuities, burdensome to the national budget, and polluting legis- 
lation; yet, without, abuse, just and proper indemnity for losses 
in public service. A young and promising member, afterwards 
Post-Master General, and now Judge of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, John M'Lean, advocated this bill with proper 
limitations to objects taken into public service for the occasions 
of warfare. Thomas Grosvenor attempted to invalidate by ex- 
tending it to all property destroyed by the enemy, which though 
rejected by the House, disclosed abuses of the practice, since 
more successfully effected. 

Congress, at this session, enacted what the common law of 
war already ruled, that American property protected by enemy's 



CHAP. III.] ENEMY'S LICENSES FOR VESSELS. JX5 

license is to be forfeited ; superadding pecuniary penalties and 
personal punishments. The Supreme Court, unanimously of 
this opinion, took the broad ground that mere sailing under 
enemy's license, without regard to the object of the voyage or 
port of destination, constitutes, of itself, an illegal act, subjecting 
the vessel and cargo to confiscation. The act of Congress super- 
added further inflictions. "It is an attempt," said the court, "by 
one individual of a country at war, to clothe himself with neutral 
character by license of the other belligerent, and thus separate 
himself from the common character of his country.'' 

Extending this foundation of prize-law, on the 16th July, the 
Senate sent to the House, by their venerable secretary, James 
Allyne Otis, who had held that place by constant re-elections 
from April, 1789, at the first session of the Senate, throughout 
thirteen Congresses till October, 1814, when a resolution attested 
his deserts, an act confirmatory of it, which, as it finally passed 
ours, with General Hopkins, of Kentucky, in the chair, inflicted 
penalties of twice the value of the vessel and cargo and a fine 
of from one to five thousand dollars upon any citizen or in- 
habitant of the United States, obtaining or using, either directly 
or indirectly, a license, pass, or other instrument granted by 
the government of Great Britain, any officer or agent thereof 
for the protection of any ship or merchandize, on the sea or else- 
where, making it the duty of the commanders of all public and 
private armed vessels of the United States to capture such British 
licensed property sailing under the enemy's flag as prize, and 
granting it accordingly to the captors on judicial condemnation. 

Intercourse of all kinds between Americans and British is so 
natural and common that it is difficult to repress its continual 
recurrence, even when the law of war renders it treasonable. 
Habit, cupidity, and disaffection, the loose loyalty of long peace 
and lucrative pursuits, caused mischievous relaxation of the 
inflexible rigours of hostility indispensable to success in war; 
whose sternest hardships should never be dispensed with but by 
sovereign authority. British functionaries, admirals, consuls and 
others, and Americans addicted to trade, were extremely given 
to illicit gain by unlawful dealings of enemies. The Supreme 
Court of the United States, by one of its judges, Johnson, forci- 
bly declared that, in war, nations are known to each other only 
by their armed exterior. It prolongs and aggravates the suffer- 



1X6 PRIVATEERS. [JUNE, 1813. 

ings of hostilities, to permit individuals to withdraw from their 
stern commands by partial, personal, and temporary pacification. 
There should be no individual truce or advantage. All must 
strike at all, and each at each, however painful the blow, when- 
ever government so directs. Wherefore the bill prohibiting British 
licenses, after rejecting attempts by Mr. Pickering, Mr. Pitkin, 
and Mr. Oakley, to frustrate the measure, by comprehending 
French licenses, and licenses from all nations, in the interdict of 
the British, became a law by the votes of all the supporters of 
the war against those of all its opponents. 

By act of the 26th March, 1812, concerning letters of marque, 
prizes, and prize goods, the twelfth Congress appropriated two 
per cent, of the prize money of captured vessels, and of salvage 
on those recaptured, by the privateers of the United States, to be 
paid to collectors of customs and consuls, as a fund for the sup- 
port and maintenance of the widows and orphans of the slain, 
wounded and disabled on board privateers, in engagements with 
the enemy. By subsequent act of the 2d August, of the same 
session, this bounty was extended to death or disability in the 
line of duty. On the 30th June, 1813, Hugh Nelson, chairman 
of the Naval committee, reported amendments to that act, which 
were considered on the 19th July, in committee of the Whole, 
Nathaniel Macon in the chair, and next day adopted without 
alteration or opposition, directing the two per cent, to be paid to 
the secretary of the treasury, instead of collectors and consuls, 
and requiring the treasury to place privateersmen on the pension 
list on the same footing with officers and men of the navy. On the 
21st July, Mr. Nelson, from the Naval committee, reported a bill 
allowing a bounty to every privateersman, upon which the House 
went into committee of the Whole next day, General Desha in 
the chair, and passed it on the 29th July, Mr. Kennedy in the 
chair, the 28th, when the amendments were adopted.' By this 
law every privateersman was entitled to twenty-five dollars for 
every prisoner captured, brought into port, and delivered to an 
authorized agent of the United States. Next session the bounty 
was increased from twenty-five to one hundred dollars. On the 
23d July, the Naval committee reported a bill reducing duties on 
goods captured by privateers, which became a law on the 2d 
August, so far as to allow a deduction of thirty-three and a third 
per cent, on the amount of legal duties. On the 3d July, Senate 



CHAP. III.] PRIVATEERS. 117 

sent the House a bill to relinquish the claim of the United States 
to goods captured by privateers, on which we went into commit- 
tee of the Whole on the 10th July, William R. King in the chair, 
afterwards secretary of legation in Russia, then for many years 
senator from Alabama, now American minister in France, and 
passed it two days afterwards, without amendment, notwith- 
standing Mr. Pitkin's motion for its indefinite postponement. 

By such progressive provisions a tower of naval strength 
was restored, which disuse and discouragement had impaired. 
The first treaty of the United States struck at this arm by 
stipulating that no citizen or inhabitant of the United States, 
on pain of punishment as a pirate, should apply for, or take 
from, any prince or state with whom France might be at war, 
any commission or letter of marque for arming a vessel to act 
as privateer against French subjects or property. Franklin's 
long residence in Europe, and providence for the peaceable de- 
velopment of America, disgusted him with the frequent cause- 
less, and dreadful warfare of the old world ; and enamoured him 
with projects of perpetual peace. One of the means of it was 
to abolish private hostilities by sea, restricting them to war ves- 
sels ; not foreseeing that at no distant day, privateering would 
be the cheapest and most efficient of this country's armaments 
to vindicate the freedom of the ocean. Maritime liberty and 
equality, peace by sea, democracy of the ocean, like perfectly 
free international trade, have never yet been reconciled with 
the practice and prejudices of mankind, segregated in different 
nations. Several of the early treaties of the United States 
adopted all these benevolent principles. Great Britain has 
always resisted them; the last time in 1823, when President 
Monroe made the proposal, which was unequivocally rejected. 
Theories of commerce unrestricted, war without private hos- 
tilities, and by voluntary instead of compulsory troops, which 
harmonize with humane and republican institutions, have the 
practice of ages to contend with. In less than three years of our 
war, the captures by sea from England, besides 56 vessels of 
war, mounting 886 cannons, were 2369 merchant vessels, with 
800 cannons, 354 ships, 610 brigs, 520 schooners, and 135 sloops, 
besides 750 vessels of various sizes recaptured, altogether 2425 
vessels, with incalculable amount of cargoes, stores, provisions 
and equipments, and many thousand prisoners of war. Most of 



118 SECRET SESSION. [JULY, 1813. 

these prizes being made by privateers, this grand total of belli- 
gerent annoyance and emoluments by armaments costing the 
public nothing, afford a volume of argument against relinquish- 
ment of such resource for war, whatever humanity and policy 
may say for that self denial. 

On the 15th of July, 1813, late in the afternoon, after a great 
deal of business had been done that morning, the House went 
into secret session on proceedings so indicative of the state of 
things then, as to deserve some account of them. After a mid- 
summer day's work, on motion of Colonel Philip Stuart, at half- 
past three o'clock it was cleared of all persons except the mem- 
bers, clerk, sergeant-at-arms and door-keeper, and the doors closed. 
When confidential communications are received from the presi- 
dent, the rule is to clear the House during their reading and the 
proceedings thereon. When the speaker or a member informs 
the House that he has communications to make which he con- 
ceives ought to be kept secret, the House is cleared till the com- 
munication is made, then determines whether the communication 
requires secrecy, and takes order accordingly. Colonel Stuart, 
on whose motion we went into conclave, was a gentleman well 
advanced in life, had served, if I do not mistake, in the war of 
the Revolution, and represented a Maryland district contiguous 
to Washington. He was not a speaking or active member, but 
a country gentleman, of the federal opposition, which was much 
less bitter south of the Delaware, though Maryland was a strongly 
federal state throughout the war. His resolution was preluded 
by a preamble affirming that the seat of government, from the 
unprepared and defenceless state of the District of Columbia, was 
in imminent danger if attacked ; the fleet of the enemy was un- 
derstood to be within a few hours sail of the capital, the immense 
value of public property exposed to destruction, and the great 
value of the public records, rendered it important that invasion 
of the metropolis should be met with vigour and repelled ; where- 
fore a distribution of such arms as were in possession of the go- 
vernment within the District should be immediately placed in the 
hands of all able-bodied men of the District, and of such mem- 
bers of the House as were willing to receive them, to act against 
the enemy in any manner not incompatible with their public 
duties. 

There were then none of that large corps of licensed and 



CHAP. III.] SECRET SESSION. j ^9 

licentious news-mongers at Washington, since established in the 
capitol,as letter writers for various public journals ; the National 
Intelligencer, the only daily paper, was nearly suspended, both the 
editors and seven of the workmen having gone down with the 
volunteer companies, together with all the regular troops and 
volunteers that could be mustered from Washington, Georgetown 
and that neighbourhood, to the number of about 3000 men, to 
face the foe; also General Armstrong, Secretary of War; Colo- 
nel Monroe, Secretary of State ; Captain Jones, Secretary of the 
Navy ; and many others as volunteers. All business was sus- 
pended. Most of the men took up arms. The British advancing 
vessels were supposed to be some miles below, on their way 
to Washington. The Adams vessel of war, commanded by 
Lieutenant Wadsworth, Fort Warburton and other defensible 
points were disposed of as was thought best for resistance, and 
the Secretary of the Navy slept on board of that vessel. At the 
same time British vessels were moving up the Chesapeake to- 
wards Annapolis, besides those ascending the Potomac towards 
Washington. Some skirmishing took place at Swan's Point, 
where one or two of our militia were killed just before Colonel 
Monroe got on the ground with a troop of horse ; he being al- 
ways among the most active and indefatigable of our volunteers. 
There were some companies and parts of regiments of the regu- 
ular infantry and artillery together with the volunteers stationed 
wherever thought best. The enemy's squadron, as was under- 
stood, in two divisions, the first under Admiral Cockburn, the se- 
cond under Admiral Warren, were carefully sounding and slowly 
sailing up the Potomac, amounting, according to our tidings, to 
six or seven line of battle ships, three frigates, a brig, three 
schooners, and several transports with land forces, taking islands 
and threatening to visit Washington. Batteries and other defen- 
sive works were going up under the superintendence of Colonel 
Wadsworth, an old officer of artillery, at Greenleaf's Point and 
the navy yard. Such militia and other troops as remained were 
drilled every morning at dawn ; with perpetual appeals to the 
spirit of the people, against what the public prints stigmatized as 
the enemy's character, mode of warfare, and black barbarities. 
This state of alarm and excitement continued about a week, 
during which that attack was apprehended which thirteen months 
afterwards laid the public edifices of Washington in ruins. Some 



120 SECRET SESSION. [JULY, 1813. 

of the black barbarities of the English, were blazoned in the 
Richmond Enquirer, National Intelligencer, and other publica- 
tions, with particulars shocking to be even alluded to. 

Our situation was discouraging. From the beginning, the 
war had gone continually against us, except at sea, where we 
were overwhelmed by numbers. There was too much reason 
to apprehend that the United States were no match for Great 
Britain. Defeated and disgraced everywhere, Congress was to 
impose the burthen of taxes on a divided people, who had been 
taught by leaders of the war party to look upon a tax gatherer 
as a thief, if not to shoot him as a burglar. The sentiment was 
universal, that we had not one military man in whom either 
the army or the country could place confidence. The capture 
of the unlucky Chesapeake seemed to wake us, as it were, 
from a dream of unexpected sea comfort, of which the flood 
was over and the ebb set in. The country was at the lowest 
point of depression, where fear is too apt to introduce despair. 
In Senate, the State of New York, a principal theatre of mili- 
tary operations, was represented, in part, by a Senator, Oba- 
diah German; the State of Pennsylvania, nearly unanimous for 
the war, by another, Michael Leib, popular there and active 
everywhere ; the State of Maryland by a third, General Samuel 
Smith, a rich merchant of great experience, address and influ- 
ence ; and the State of Virginia by a fourth senator, Wm. B. Giles, 
the most expert debater and one of the ablest members of that 
vital branch of both executive and legislative government, all 
inimical to Madison and his administration ; besides several other 
senators nominally of the war party, but not well disposed to the 
president, who was opposed by a large and powerful party in 
that body, in which combinations frequently defeated his most 
important measures. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gallatin, 
was gone to Europe to solicit the only relief he considered prac- 
ticable for the country. The merely perfunctory duties of the 
treasury department, owing to the president's hardly justifiable 
adhesion to Mr. Gallatin as its head, were temporarily performed 
by the Secretary of the Navy, Captain Jones, who with respecta- 
ble abilities could hardly fulfil the arduous duties of his own 
station. The Post Master General, Mr. Granger, was so much 
opposed to the president, that he found it necessary not long 



CHAP. III.] SECRET SESSION. 121 

after to remove him from office and put Governor Meigs of Ohio, 
in his place. The Secretaries of State and War, Colonel Monroe 
and General Armstrong, were said to be breathing that rivalship 
for the presidential succession which put the former in the latter's 
place, when Armstrong was tumultuously driven from Washing- 
ton the night after its capture by the enemy. The executive de- 
partments of government were out of joint with each other, and 
many of them out of favour with most of the advocates of the 
war. There was a large, bold, and some of them unscrupulous 
minority, without, however, any treacherous disloyalty that I 
know of, beyond the usual struggle of parties to supplant each 
other. Some members, no doubt, countenanced that extreme 
opposition which afterwards centered in the Hartford Convention, 
whatever its undivulged designs may have been. But there was 
neither despair nor more than party dissension at any moment 
in either House of Congress, less faction in the minority and more 
unanimity in the majority, than would have been the case under 
less irying circumstances. The disastrous commencement of the 
war was not without the uses of adversity. From a distant point 
of time we may look back upon the~external pressure and inter- 
nal resistance of that crisis with gratitude to the overruling Pro- 
vidence which, by what seemed calamitous occurrences, prepared 
the country for happy results. Next to Divine Providence, this 
historical acknowledgment is due to that popular providence, 
that much despised, abused and undervalued mass of the people, 
a considerable, however fluctuating, yet constant majority of the 
American nation, the least, calculating but truest and firmest of 
all, who under every tribulation upheld and cheered their lineal 
offspring, a majority in the House of Representatives. Those on 
whom the taxes bore hardest, whose livelihoods were most inter- 
rupted, whose names would probably never be blazoned to ce- 
lebrity — like the common sailor and soldier who bore the brunt 
of war, actuated more by patriotic impulse than selfish reason — 
they never deserted or faltered. " Who loves the people ?" said 
Voltaire, a greater architect than Bonaparte of that prodigious 
revolution which restored their sovereignty, notwithstanding all 
its abuses and aberrations. Yet without coincidence with (hat least 
selfish, though least refined mass, without even party spirit so 
much deprecated, what state can be free, what free state great, 
what statesman strong? 

VOL. I. 11 



122 SECRET SESSION. [JULY, 1812. 

Among the fervid and the fearless to whom no small share of 
the popular success of that war is attributable under extremely 
trying circumstances, none is entitled to more grateful recollec- 
tion than the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry 
Clay. Ardent and bold in support of the war and Madison's 
administration of it; prompt, clear, cogent and authoritative in 
the chair; eloquent, forcible, aggressive in speech; impulsive and 
overbearing, yet adroit and commanding in conduct, resolute and 
daring in all things, without much learning, study or polish, he 
was then, in the flower of his age and robust health, the power- 
ful champion of whatever he undertook, and master spirit where- 
ever he acted. His descent from presiding over the representa- 
tion of popular sovereignty was the first step of his declension. 

We had hardly the door closed in secret session before John 
Rhea, of Tennessee, came within ten votes of carrying his motion 
to lay Colonel Stuart's resolution on the table, which Rhea 
denounced as a factious attack upon the administration. As 
Colonel Stuart submitted the resolution on his responsibility for 
his sincerity, feeling bound to believe it at least until the contrary 
should be shown, I voted with Macon and a few others of our 
party, with all the federalists, against laying it on the table. Mr. 
Rhea was a great oddity, in appearance, behaviour, dress, speecli 
and temper, a rich old bachelor, a very honest man, a thorough 
going party man, and a good-natured man, but one of those 
gruff, growling persons who would rather be considered unkind 
when he really was not. The Tennessee delegation at that time, 
besides Mr. Rhea, consisted, among others, of Felix Grundy, a 
distinguished member of the war party, and of General John 
Sevier, an old Indian hunter, as straight and almost as stiff as an 
arrow, with the stern deportment of reserve and self-possession 
which men are apt to contract who have much intercourse with 
savages, and the hardihood of frontier life on the outskirts of 
civilization, in perpetual conflict with them. General Sevier, if 
I am not mistaken, had been involved, among the pioneers of the 
West, in a rencontre with the most extraordinary American of the 
nineteenth century, General Jackson, also of Tennessee. 

After Rhea's motion was negatived, Mr. Thomas G. Gholson, 
of Virginia, moved to strike out the preamble from Colonel 
Stuart's resolution, which being done, and the blow at the admi- 
nistration, if any was intended, thus parried, the subject came 
before the House for consideration on its merits. 



CHAP. III.] SECRET SESSION. 123 

The weather was in canicular sympathy with our condition, 
as representatives of the country and the party on whom its 
forlorn fortunes were pressing; one of those dry, sultry, windy, 
not cloudy, but misty, murky, smoky, overcast uncomfortable 
dog days, whether the regular caniculars had set in or not, which 
surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, with the sluggish Poto- 
mac, and extensive flats between it and the Tyber, closed July 
and prefaced August with unwholsome, enervating, sweltering, 
atrabilious, suffocating, languid, feverish heat, as hot as the fac- 
tion within and war without. Washington was unhealthy in 
the latter part of summer and most of autumn. There were 
few of the crowds of visitors, or of inhabitants now there ; most of 
those few had marched away on the sudden campaign sprung up, 
and Pennsylvania Avenue, the only peopled part of that me- 
tropolis of magnificent distances, had hardly a listener along its 
disconsolate thoroughfare. Congress were nearly alone in the 
capitol, of which only the two wings were then built, without 
the rotunda, or either of the noble fronts now facing east and 
west; the whole pile imperfect and extemporary. It blew a 
hurricane, roaring like great guns through the dome of the House 
of Representatives, and struck down the flag rattling on the top. 
Distant artillery was audible, as was thought, from time to time, 
and rumours continually afloat as the enemy advanced. The divi- 
sion of parties was so intense that there was little personal inter- 
course among many members of opposite sides. The federalists 
and the republicans did not sit together, except a few republicans 
overflowing among the federalists, occupying the speaker's left. 
Debate ran high. Mr. Clay was an excellent presiding officer: 
but he could not keep the House always in order. Alexander 
Hanson, a small man, in delicate health, editor of the Federal 
Republican newspaper, one of the boldest in opposition, was a 
sharp, fierce speaker, and attacked sometimes the speaker himself. 
Mr. Thomas Grosvenor, of New York, was the readiest debater 
and hardest hitter of the federalists ; Mr. Gaston, a handsome 
man, of pleasing address and speech, Mr. Oakley, Mr. Daniel 
Sheffey, Mr. Richard Stockton, Mr. Webster, Mr. Pickering, Mr. 
Pitkin, were prominent on that side. Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, 
Solomon Sharpe, of Kentucky, assassinated in the Beauchamp 
homicides, Mr. Troup, of Georgia, Governor Wright, of Mary- 
land, James Fisk, of Vermont, Jonathan Fisk, of- New York, 



]24 SECRET SESSION. [JULY, 1812. 

William Duval, afterwards governor of Florida, John W. Taylor, 
afterwards speaker, Felix Grundy, were leading men of the 
republican party. John Forsyth did not speak that session, nor 
till the middle of the next, distinguished as he became for speak- 
ing talent. Nor did Mr. Webster that session make any of the 
great speeches on which his reputation rose afterwards. He and 
Mr. Stockton were gone home when the proceedings of this 
conclave took place. 

Designating some members as more remarkable than others in 
that, or any Congress of chosen men, and omitting many others, 
far from inferring judgment on their respective merits, is to be 
taken as merely referring to a few who, at the moment happened 
to figure more than the rest. The peculiar characteristics of the 
Congress of the United States, are almost universal aptitude of 
speech, facility of fluency transcending the speaking talent of any 
other representative body, and a general prevalence of strong 
good sense, mother wit, so that those who speak most and there- 
fore may seem most effective, are not probably the genii of the 
place, but the whole body is moved and mastered by predomi- 
nant and pervading intelligence less demonstrative and more felt. 
Political distinction is extremely short-lived, seldom registered on 
ihe rolls of fame; party prominence, topics, and passions still 
more evanescent. Founders and warriors have historical cele- 
brity ; writers sometimes; speakers seldom, and only when they 
reach, as very few do, the regions of renown. The fame of a 
member of Congress is like collegiate honour, often eclipsed by 
much less forwardness. Two of the surviving members of the 
War Congress, then not prominent, are now, one of them Mr. 
John M'Lean, afterwards an efficient and successful head of the 
Post-office department, from which he was removed to the Su- 
}>reme Court of the United States; the other, after long service 
as a distinguished senator, Mr. William R. King, now the Ameri- 
can minister in France. On the other hand, how many then 
leading men, are now totally unknown ! Rome became mistress 
of the world before scarcely a Roman appeared to veil of it ; 
while Greece was spoken and written into celebration. Talent 
for business, for action, in armies, in legislatures, in every branch 
of government, is the most enduring of all ; and even that must 
depend on those occasions which are considered fortune. Flu- 
ency and force of speech, without much learning, but mother wit, 



CHAP. III.] SECRET SESSION. 



125 



energy and commonalty of intelligence, are the characteristics of 
the American House of Representatives, as compared with other 
similar assemblages. Erudition, classical quotation, profound 
and accurate acquirements, more noise, less order, fewer rules, 
much less speaking talent are remarkable in the British House 
of Commons; very little speaking talent, more confusion, but in 
rare instances, a higher order of elegant oratory, in the French 
Chamber of Deputies. The freedom of communication between 
, all deliberative assemblies and the public, reports of debates and 
their influence, have assumed much greater latitude and effect 
with the growing importance of this country. 

There would be little interest now in the debate on Colonel 
Stuart's motion, which debate dwelt upon for other purposes. 
After the preamble was disposed of, Mr. William A. Burwell, of 
the aristocracy of the Virginia democracy— a Randolph, a Carter 
or a Burwell must have great personal superiority, said Jefferson, 
over a common competitor to be elected by the people— moved 
to commit the subject to the committee on military affairs ; of 
which committee, Colonel Stuart, and another respectable officer 
of the Revolution and a federalist, Colonel Tallmadge, of Connec- 
ticut, were members, but with five of the war party which the 
speaker took care there should be on that committee to control 
it. Mr. BurwelPs motion met the issue, and after it had been 
sufficiently discussed, by a vote of seventy-four to forty-four, 
mostly a party vote, it succeeded. Next day Mr. Troup, chair- 
man of the military committee, reported that having examined 
the state of preparation, naval and military, they were satisfied 
that it was in every respect adequate, and that no measures on 
the part of the house were necessary to make it more complete : 
which was ordered to be inserted in the journal. 

So we felt at the time ; and feeling so, we thought so. As the 
enemy had not then land troops enough for the capture of Wash- 
ington, perhaps it was true that we were in no danger of being 
surprised in the capital. But thirteen months afterwards, its 
conflagration — when Washington was sacked, at which time the 
means of defence were a hundred fold greater than during our 
alarm of July, 1813— proved deplorably that the assurances of 
General Armstrong and other military authorities to whom we 
looked for reliance, were grossly mistaken in their confidence. 
W e voted at all events that the executive had not left the metro- 

11* 



126 CAPITAL THREATENED. [JULY, 1812 

polls exposed to a sudden incursion, as opposition acrimoniously 
charged, and our party stoutly denied. 

During the angry discussion, when the House was sometimes 
noisy, the speaker commanded silence with unusual emphasis, — 
" Gentlemen," said he, "if we do arm and take the field, I am 
sure we shall be beat, if there is not more order kept in the ranks 
than in this House. I should be sorry to head so disorderly a 
body." At that time, when the old generals were to be laid aside 
and successful juniors had not yet appeared, it was, among other 
devices, one of the expedients contemplated to commission Mr. 
Clay for the army; also Mr. John Randolph, notwithstanding his 
unmitigated opposition to the declaration of war. Superseded 
by Mr. Eppes, Mr. Randolph was not a member of the War 
Congress: his urgent, constant, and potent efforts to prevent the 
declaration, having lost him the district he so long represented. 
Mr. Clay in the field might have found there a theatre for his 
genius possibly better adapted than Congress. 

Aggravating, dismal tidings from all quarters, by land and sea, 
far and near, and from Europe, the alarm of the 15th July, 1813, 
contributed to our disgrace. The enemy almost beat up our quar- 
ters at Washington; menaced Congress in the capitol; not a topic 
of consolation had we — nothing like one to be proud of. At last 
on the 27th July, it was understood at Washington that difficulties 
encountered by the British ships in passing a place called the 
Kettle-bottoms, frustrated their approach to the seat of govern- 
ment ; and that their naval force, consisting of six line-of-battle 
ships, three frigates, two sloops of war, five gun brigs, nine 
schooners, a rocket vessel, and about fifty barges, all turned 
back, sailing down the river, as was thought intending to go 
round to Annapolis. Next day, General Van Ness' orders 
appeared in print dismissing and thanking the militia and vo- 
lunteers who had under his command repaired to the scene of 
action. On the 24th July, the president had proclaimed a day 
of humiliation and prayer, to be observed by the people of the 
United States with religious solemnity, pursuant to a resolution 
of Congress, which originated in Senate, and passed the House 
on the 19th July. The same day we had the melancholy intel- 
ligence that on the British landing from their ships, taking Ocra- 
cock and Portsmouth, threatening Beaufort and Newbern, in 
North Carolina; Mrs. Gaston, lady of the member of the House, 



■ 






CHAP. III.] EMBARGO. 127 

fell into convulsions and expired in a few hours — such were the 
frightful impressions made hy their predatory incursions. 

Under these circumstances the session was drawing to a close. 
On Tuesday, the 20th July, the House again went into secret 
session, upon a message from the president brought by his secre- 
tary, John Graham, recommending an embargo to counteract 
British blockade of our ports, clandestinely licensing enemies 
disguised as neutrals, and insidiously discriminating between 
different ports of the United States, thus subjecting American 
commerce to British regulation and monopoly. The message 
was referred to the committee of Foreign Relations, in whose 
behalf their chairman, Mr. Calhoun, reported against the sugges- 
tion. Mr. Calhoun had always been opposed to restrictive mea- 
sures. But the House went into committee on the subject ; and 
when the speaker resumed the chair, resolved by a majority of 
twenty -seven to adopt the plan, and referred it to a select com- 
mittee of which Felix Grundy was appointed chairman, and not 
a single opponent of the executive put on it. The eminent gen- 
tlemen of South Carolina, Mr. J^owndes, Mr. Cheves, and Mr. 
Calhoun had never been reconciled to Jefferson's restrictive sys- 
tem, which Madison adhered to. They all voted against a resort 
to it on this occasion ; when Colonel Pickering voted with us for 
it. Next day, Mr. Grundy reported a bill conforming to the 
president's views ; which, after a good deal of controversy, we 
finally passed by a majority of thirty, without one federal vote, 
and the South Carolinians voting against us : but it was defeated 
in the Senate on one of the last days of the session, which thus 
ended with one of the objects of government defeated in Con- 
gress ; superadding one more mortification to all the rest. 

Soon after Congress assembled that session, on the 31st May, 
1813, Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, John 
Quincy Adams, American minister in Russia, and James A. 
Bayard, a Senator from the state of Delaware, were nominated 
envoys extraordinary to negotiate peace under the mediation of 
Russia. That mission will necessarily become the subject of 
much attention hereafter. At present it is only necessary to 
state that neither of these gentlemen was of the war party ; Mr. 
Gallatin openly and anxiously against it ; Mr. Adams officially 
declared his belief that no good could come of it ; Mr. Bayard of 
the party which voted against, and always resisted, its declara- 



128 MR - GALLATIN'S NOMINATION. [JULY, 1812. 

tion. Two days before our special session ended, on the 31st July, 
1813, Dr. Leib submitted, in Senate, a motion, decision on which 
was deferred till next session, when another senator of the war 
party, Joseph Anderson, of Tennessee, afterwards for many 
years first comptroller of the treasury, renewed it by a resolution 
that the offices of envoy extraordinary and Secretary of the 
Treasury are incompatible, and ought not to be united in the 
same person. There can be no doubt of this assertion ; which 
however, Madison, with the inflexible tenacity of passionless 
men, influenced, too, probably, by the high opinion he inherited 
from Jefferson, of Mr. Gallatin's pre-eminent capacity, and both 
of them flattering themselves that the war might soon be brought 
to a close by some un warlike collateral move — Madison resisted, 
answered a call from the Senate that the office of Secretary of 
the Treasury was not vacated ; but in the absence of Albert 
Gallatin, commissioned to treat for peace, the duties of that office 
were performed by William Jones, Secretary of the Navy, 
conformably to the provisions of the act of Congress of the 8th 
May, 1792, and the supplement of 1795, which authorize the 
president to substitute another incumbent in case of death, 
absence, or sickness of the Secretary of the Treasury for a 
period not exceeding six months. Mr. Gallatin's absence was 
protracted beyond twenty months. But from the first the presi- 
dent had but the mere letter of the law. The Senate resolved 
that its spirit contemplated inevitable absence ; and by that 
effective majority, one vote, the opposition being joined by 
Joseph Anderson, Elijius Fromentin, John Galliard, William B. 
Giles, Michael Leib, Samuel Smith, and Mr. Stone, all of the 
war party, rejected Mr. Gallatin. He was afterwards nominated 
when no longer Secretary of the Treasury, and confirmed ; but 
by this operation, reduced from the front to the foot of the com- 
mission ; of which, till Mr. Clay and Jonathan Russell were 
added, the war had not an advocate. 

Mr. Gallatin's rejection was only one of numerous instances 
in which the president was overruled by the Senate ; so much so, 
that many nominations and measures of his predilection were not 
attempted for fear of their rejection. That is a wise, if not indis- 
pensable combination which renders legislation dependent on two 
bodies, constituting the Congress for a republic of states, of vari- 
ous, often conflicting interests; a combination, moreover, wise, be- 



CHAP. III.] MR. GALLATIN'S NOMINATION. 



129 



cause it requires the deliberate concurrence of a majority of the re- 
presentatives of the people with that of those of the states, before a 
bill can be presented to the president, by his approval to become 
an act of Congress ; furthermore, that is a wholesome fiat of the 
organic law which renders its alteration so difficult as to be well 
nigh impossible. But the influence of England predominated when 
the rubric of acts of Parliament, supposed to proceed from the 
king, came to be applied to the method which places the popular 
after the executive branch of Congress, in the title of acts of 
Congress : still more did this English influence prevail when, by 
social regulations of precedence, senators take rank of those who 
represent the sovereignty, as lords do commons. 



130 MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1813. [JAN. 1813. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1813.— NORTH-WESTERN ARMY.— KENTUCKY 
VOLUNTEERS.— GENERAL HARRISON.— WINCHESTER.— MASSACRE AT 
RIVER RAISIN.— SIEGES AT FORT MEIGS.— REPULSE AT SANDUSKY.— 
CROGHAN.— NAVAL BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE. — PERRY. — ELLIOTT.— 
BARCLAY. 

Hull's surrender left the north-west in hostile possession ; more 
than the present state of Michigan ; and exposed the borders of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky. To recover lost ground, a 
large body of volunteers and militia were called out from Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and placed under the 
command of Brigadier-General William Henry Harrison, of the 
Ohio militia, who had long been the popular Governor of the 
north-western territories. The call to arms was met everywhere 
with ardour ; in Kentucky with great enthusiasm. Every one 
had led the frontier life, which renders a warlike order like an 
invitation to a hunting party. The question was not who should 
go, but who would stay. It was computed that as many as 
1 5,000 Kentuckians were in the field. The people rose as one 
man, of all parties, callings, ages and situations. Several mem- 
bers of the Kentucky delegation in Congress with me served as 
privates, particularly Samuel M'Kee and Thomas Montgomery : 
Mr. Simpson, a fine young man, six feet six inches tall, member 
elect, was killed at the river Raisin ; Richard M. Johnson acted 
as volunteer aid to General Harrison, afterwards as colonel of 
his excellent, mounted regiment, 1200 strong. Mr. Clay, though 
not under arms, was abroad at the musters, urging them to action, 
and promising that, (as after many difficulties they did,) they 
should retake Maiden, and bring the British with them prisoners 
to Kentucky. His fellow citizens were to remember, he said, 
that they were expected to distinguish themselves, not only as 
Americans, but as Kentuckians too. The Ohio Senators, Thomas 
Worthington and Jeremiah Morrow, were also serving as com- 



CHAP. IV.] NORTH-WESTERN EXPEDITION. 131 

missioners with Governor Meigs of that State to prevail on the 
Indians not to take up arms against us. 

A difficulty as to rank between Winchester and Harrison, both 
brigadiers, was adjusted at a kind of caucus, as it was called in 
the west, where Isaac Shelby, Judge Todd of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, Mr. Clay and others settled it, that Harri- 
son should be commissioned major-general by Governor Scott, of 
Kentucky, and thus, without dispute, take his place as leader of 
the expedition. Some of the primordial friends of the war de- 
sired also a western board of war, to direct operations there, 
deemed too remote from Washington for promptly efficient man- 
agement. But the Secretary of War, Armstrong, had no diffi- 
culty in convincing President Madison that this would never do. 

In a short time 10,000 soldiers, nearly all volunteers and mi- 
litia, excellent raw materials, were embodied. Fragments of the 
seventeenth regiment of regular Infantry, commanded by Colonel 
John Miller, and of the nineteenth regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel 
Van Home, the seventeenth a Kentucky, the nineteenth an Ohio 
regiment, to whom afterwards during the seige of Fort Meigs, 200 
of the regular dragoons were added, were joined to Harrison's 
army of 10,000 men from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and 
Virginia, at probably greater expense of money than the same 
number of men ever cost. Confidence and ardour pervading the 
whole, from general to private, Harrison led out this brave force, 
over forests, deserts, swamps, and almost insuperable obstacles 
for a winter campaign, doomed to be defeated in the beginning 
of 1813, with deplorable loss and misfortune. 

The peninsula of Michigan which Hull surrendered and Har- 
rison finally with Perry's preliminary victory reconquered, lies 
in conical configuration between Lakes Michigan, Huron, St. 
Clair and Erie, with Lakes Superior and Ontario not far distant, 
in marvellous communication; Green Bay, Manitouline Bay and 
Saginaw Bay, parts of this immense expanse of Mediterranean 
seas, all of them much deeper than the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, 
" deeper than did ever plummet sound ;" so clear and transpa- 
rent, most of their waters, that 200 feet below the surface is dis- 
cernible ; a series of lakes rising in terraces above the level of 
tide-water and the ocean, in incomprehensible steps of progres- 
sive altitude from Ontario to Lake Superior. The magnificent 
falls of Niagara and the Strait of Detroit are among the natural, 



132 KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS. [JAN. 1813. 

the cities of Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Erie, Sandusky, Buffalo, 
Rochester and Kingston of the artificial cariosities of this lake 
region, destined, since steam has come to control wind and water, 
to be seats of more extensive commerce, plied by more numerous 
mariners than now man the vessels of these United States, 
with their millions of tonnage on all the oceans of the world. 
The surface of Lake Huron is nearly 700 feet above the level of 
the ocean, while the bottom of that lake is 1100 feet in Saginaw 
Bay below that level. These lakes altogether are nearly nine- 
teen degrees of latitude in breadth, by sixteen degrees of longi- 
tude in length. - Their surface covers between ninety and a hun- 
dred thousand miles in extent, and they drain an area of territory 
of about four hundred thousand square miles. Michigan, the 
cabinet encircled by these frames of water, was the prize for sur- 
rendering which, without striking a blow, to an inferior force, 
Hull was not shot when condemned to be, to regain which Har- 
rison pushed forward with his raw levies, on the attempt of a 
winter campaign in regions of impracticable difficulty. 

A more gallant army than Harrison's never went to battle ; the 
Kentucky part of it especially embraced numbers of the most 
estimable and considerable men of that state, and many of them 
veterans in Indian warfare. But seldom was discomfiture more 
complete or fatal than theirs. While General Harrison with the 
right wing was lying at Sandusky, General Winchester, command- 
ing the left, was induced to detach Colonels Lewis and Allen, of 
Kentucky, to advance beyond reach of support, for the protection 
of the inhabitants of Frenchtown, a village on the river Raisin, 
which is a small stream emptying into the northwest angle of Lake 
Erie. The generous but unmilitary motive for this rash advance 
was to comply with a request of the inhabitants, who sent mes- 
sages to Winchester entreating protection from Indian pillage and 
destruction, with which they said they were threatened. On the 
18th of January, 1S13, the Kentuckians, under Lewis, attacked 
and defeated a combined Indian and English force of 500 men 
under Major Reynolds, of the Canadian militia. Colonel Lewis 
had great experience in Indian hostilities. He had served in the 
campaigns of Harmer, St. Clair and Wayne, twenty years before, 
as well as with Governor Scott ; was a man of great courage, and 
the favourite officer of that wing of the army. Such was the uni- 
versal ardour for this expedition, that in filling the Kentucky quota 



CHAP. IV.] KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS. 



133 



of troops to overflowing, many other veterans in Indian warfare. 
Simon Kenton, Bland Ballard, George Madison and others march- 
ed on this occasion. Their success at Frenchtown was so complete 
that it produced a degree of most unfortunate confidence in the 
double character of Americans and Kentuckians. The new Sec- 
retary of War, General Armstrong, sneered at what he called this 
press of valour under popular leaders ; he never liked Harrison, 
and had little confidence in militia. 

A good deal of bloodshed in the first essay at Frenchtown, 
rescuing the inhabitants from the depredations they feared, and 
the natural effects of complete success, flushed not only the 
victors themselves under Lewis, but inspired their comrades 
under Winchester, to almost invidious eagerness for further con- 
flict. The news was electric at the Rapids, a few miles distant, 
where Winchester was. Not a man under his command could 
be restrained from rushing forward to join Lewis, renew his 
triumphs, and share their glory. General Winchester was well- 
disposed to lead them. He was then an elderly man, having 
served in the army of the Revolution ; a native of Maryland, 
appointed from Tennessee brigadier-general of the regular army. 
He was a man of fortune, mild, generous, popular, and no doubt 
a brave man. When selected for appointment, an obscure man 
of that state, Andrew Jackson, desired the place given to James 
Winchester. But the distinguished member of Congress repre- 
senting the district preferred the latter ; and, as was said, be- 
cause, if not put in the army, Winchester might have been a 
formidable candidate for Congress. On such insignificant things 
does the fate of men depend ; and of nations. If Jackson had 
commanded at the Raisin, instead of Winchester, either Jackson, 
by being defeated, would have marred his wonderful advance- 
ment, or by heading the Lewises, Madisons, Harts, Simpsons, 
and other elite of Kentucky, defeated and destroyed on the 22d 
January, would have reversed the fortunes of that disastrous day. 
If so, Maiden might have been retaken, the whole current of the 
campaign changed from a series of discomfitures, into a stream 
of success. Winchester was so unpopular with the Kentucky 
volunteers, that, when stationed, before they marched, for some 
time, at Lexington, prejudice against him went so far as almost 
to create a mutiny among these self-opinionated troops of whom 
he took command at Fort Wayne. For a considerable period 
vol. i. — 12 



134 BATTLE AT THE RAISIN. [JAN., 1813. 

it required all the influence of the field officers with the men 
to prevail on them to submit to the order from Washington, 
assigning him to the command of high-spirited but insubordinate 
volunteers, who thought they had a right to name their own 
commander. By kindness, patience, and generosity, not by the 
energy with which Jackson would have repressed this untoward 
spirit, Winchester succeeded, at last, in overcoming it. When he 
commanded at the river Raisin, he enjoyed the good-will of his 
troops ; but, though a brave and good officer in many respects, 
he was probably unequal to the perilous independent command 
of the day which defeated him and destroyed so many valuable 
lives. On the 20th January, 1813, he joined Lewis on the 
Raisin. His report of his advance to Harrison, reached the 
latter at Sandusky the 19th, with intelligence of the battle and 
victory of the 18th. Harrison instantly set off for Winchester's 
encampment at the rapids, but did not get there till Winchester was 
gone. Harrison followed as fast as he could, retarded by swamps 
almost impassable to artillery, having dispatched his Inspector- 
General, Captain Nathaniel Hart, to Winchester, with orders to 
maintain the position at the river Raisin, at any rate. Winches- 
ter had sent word to Harrison that he thought he could do so, 
if reinforced. Harrison accordingly forwarded reinforcements 
to Winchester, but they did not reach him till after his defeat. 
In all these proceedings, even the unpractised in military affairs 
perceives the want of unity, of subordination, above all, of for- 
tune, which must combine for victory. 

The weather was severe winter, in a climate of unusual 
rigour to our troops. The ground was covered with deep snow; 
yet the everlasting swamps of that region were not hard frozen. 
The gallant volunteers were ill provided with clothing and 
camp-covering; too many of the officers ignorant and negligent 
of indispensable precautions in the midst of an Indian country, 
within twenty miles of their English allies under Colonels 
Proctor and St. George, Major Muir, and other thorough-bred 
soldiers, unscrupulous of whatever means would lead to the 
great end of success, and relying for it chiefly on their nu- 
merous savage auxiliaries. As is generally the case, a small 
error or blunder, superadded to the imperfect state of the forces 
altogether, occasioned, probably, the terrible calamities of the 
battle of the 22d, and cruel massacre of the 23d January, at 



CHAP. IV.] BATTLE AT THE RAISIN. 135 

the river Raisin, which will long be lamented in the accounts of 
western warfare. When Winchester arrived at the Raisin with 
some 300 men, he found Lewis with 600, posted in gardens, 
yards, and the enclosures within them, well prepared for any 
emergency. On Lewis's right was an open field bounded by 
another enclosure like those in which he had posted his men. 
With General Winchester came Colonel Wells, who, being of 
the regular army, outranked Colonel Lewis of the volunteers. 
Lewis' advice to Winchester was to post the 300 men with 
Wells in the enclosure on Lewis' left. To this Wells objected, 
requiring the right of Lewis, which General Winchester allowed 
him to take, in an open exposed field, instead of being under 
cover of the enclosures. To this slight circumstance may be 
attributed much of the misfortune of a fatal day. The British 
and Indians attacked early in the morning of the 22d January, 
1813. Colonel Wells' detachment resisted, unprotected by any 
cover, the fierce attack of superior numbers, fought not only with 
unflinching bravery, but with great effect, till their ammunition 
began to fail ; a sad deficiency which ought not to have occurred. 
General Winchester, who courageously commanded, ordered 
Wells to retire into the enclosures where Lewis was stationed. 
Attempting to execute this difficult movement, to withdraw in 
the face of a superior enemy pressing upon them, Wells' men 
fell into confusion. Directions to fall back into Lewis' enclosures, 
were mistaken for an order to retreat. Instead of falling back 
upon Lewis, which would have rendered them quite safe, with 
an officer of experience as well as courage, the bewildered men, 
unhappily passed over the river on the ice, and retired into the 
woods, towards the rapids. They were immediately, in fact 
constantly, pursued by the Indians, who surrounded and cut 
them to pieces, fighting to the last with the utmost resolution, 
selling their lives dearly, and inflicting on their assailants heavy 
loss. All of Wells' detachment were killed but twenty-eight, 
and about forty taken prisoners. General Winchester and 
Colonel Lewis, who accompanied and attempted to rally them, 
with the general's aid and son, were taken prisoners. The 
general's official account of the action, written at Maiden the 
next day, says, that " the few of us that remained with the 
retreating party, borne down by numbers, at length submitted." 
By thus losing their two principal officers, our troops, never 



136 AMERICAN DEFEAT. [JAN., 1813. 

more than half the number of their enemies, were not only 
reduced to less than 500 remaining with Major Madison within 
the pickets, but were deprived of their principal commanders, 
and at least 300 of their companions. Thus reduced, however, 
the remainder maintained their position with undaunted and 
even desperate spirit, repulsing the British regulars several times 
and killing many more of them than their official accounts after 
the battle acknowledged. The false report of the British Adju- 
t mt-General Edward Baynes, dated at Quebec the 8th February, 
1813, was, that 400 took refuge in the houses of the town, and 
kept up a galling fire from the windows. The fact was that 
Madison repulsed every attack on his position, and maintained 
it till near noon from day-break, when the battle began ; the 
British having suffered so severely that they deemed it necessary 
to resort to a stratagem in which they unhappily succeeded. 
Falsehood is perhaps not among the forbidden arts of war, and 
the mere stratagem by which the surrender of the remainder of 
our brave men was effected, might not be deemed contrary to 
the usages of legitimate hostilities. But the vile use made of, 
at any rate, rather an unmanly trick, calls for the strongest 
reprobation of a base contrivance. General Winchester was 
prevailed upon, when taken prisoner, from motives of humanity, 
to send his aid Major Overton with a flag of truce to Major 
Madison, with proposals for an honourable capitulation, if he 
would surrender. At that time the firing had so far ceased, 
that our men supposed that the British flag had come to pro- 
pose a cessation of hostilities. General Winchester had only 
acceded to Proctor's proffer of an honourable capitulation, in 
order to save the lives of many valuable men, the flower of the 
citizens of Kentucky, who were with Major Madison. Proctor 
told him that unless they surrendered, the buildings in which 
they were would be immediately set on fire, and that he would 
not be responsible for the couduct of the Indians, who were 
greatly exasperated by the number of their warriors killed in 
the action. In this critical situation, desirous of saving the lives 
of the biave men with Major Madison, and expressly stipulating 
with Proctor that they should be protected from the savages, 
allowed to retain their private property, and have their side 
arms returned to them, Winchester yielded to Proctor's earnest 
solicitation, and sent Major Overton with the flag of truce to 



CHAP. IV.] DEFEAT AT THE RAISIN. 137 

Major Madison, who, not without great reluctance and every 
proper and possible precaution, finally submitted himself and 
his gallant comrades, prisoners of war. Between 400 and 500 
men thus fell into the hands of the enemy, of whom a great many 
were wounded, and doomed next day to horrible assassination. 
The British account claims to have killed between 400 and 500 
of our people ; Adjutant-General Baynes, in his official report, 
boasting that the Indian chief, Round-head, with his band of 
warriors, rendered essential service by their bravery and good 
conduct ; and that all the Americans who attempted to save 
themselves by flight, were cut off by the Indian warriors. It 
was Round-head who captured General Winchester, and de- 
livered him to Colonel Proctor, to be the amiable and good- 
natured instrument of his vile contrivances. 

Such was the battle of the River Raisin on the 22d of January, 
1813, preceding the massacre of the next day, which covered 
nearly every respectable family in Kentucky with mourning, 
filled every generous American bosom with indignation ; was 
visited by condign retribution at the battle of the Thames in the 
following October, and should forever be exposed among the 
detestable acts of English barbarity in that war, which, never- 
theless, found disaffected Americans graceless enough if not to 
vindicate, at all events to palliate and rejoice over. 

After the capitulation, Major Madison strongly remonstrated 
with the British commanding officer upon the necessity and 
duty of protecting the wounded American prisoners from the 
savages, who were hovering about like blood-hounds thirsting to 
prey upon them. The stipulated protection was again promised, 
with renewed assurances that the terms of capitulation should 
be faithfully and justly complied with. Next day, after General 
Winchester and other superior officers had been removed to 
Maiden, when but two of the seven American surgeons survived 
the action of the day before, our wounded officers and men, 
in want of everything and suffering- the rigours of a winter, 
the severest almost ever known in that cold climate, (when, 
if they had surrendered at discretion, every dictate of humanity 
and principle of manhood, even without regard to articles of 
capitulation, required their protection,) were given up by British 
officers to the ruthless brutalities of the Indians, and put to death 
according to their most barbarous proceedings on such occasions. 

12* 



138 MASSACRE. [JAN., 1813. 

Never giving or taking quarter, they make no prisoners, but 
exercise what is, perhaps, the sternest right of war, by putting 
all their captives to death. According to the regulations of civil- 
ized hostilities, this right does not exist but in case of absolute 
necessity for self-preservation ; and under no circumstances can 
it be exercised with tortures, mutilation, scalping, burning, and 
other abominable excesses. All our prisoners were, according 
to promise, to have been conveyed in sleighs from the Raisin to 
Maiden. Instead of that, every one of them unable to march, 
was not only murdered, but most of them tortured to death by 
the savages, as mischievous children torment insects by tearing 
them to pieces. Captain Nathaniel Hart, Mr. Clay's brother-in- 
law, had been wounded in the battle in the knee, and was una- 
ble to walk. He had greatly signalized himself by undaunted 
intrepidity. A half-breed Indian, Elliott, holding the King of 
England's commission, who had been a college companion of 
Captain Hart, promised to have him carried to Maiden and there 
taken care of in Elliott's own house. A band of ruffian savages, 
nevertheless, tore him from the bed on which he was lying, and 
were about to kill him when he was rescued by a brother officer. 
Soon after, while mounted on a horse on his way to Maiden, (on 
the 23d January,) he was shot by a party of Indians, toma- 
hawked, and scalped, his body left on the road unburied to be 
devoured by hogs. The fate of many other most respectable 
men was similiar to Captain Hart's. Nearly all our prisoners 
were stripped of their clothing, rifled of their money, the officers' 
swords given up to the savages ; men of education, talents, and 
the highest respectability treated by British officers of every 
grade, from the highest to the lowest, with supercilious harsh- 
ness, unmanly, ungentlemanly, and inhuman. When an Ame- 
rican officer urged the necessity of British surgical assistance 
to the wounded, (as five of our seven surgeons were killed,) 
Elliott's execrable reply was, the Indians are excellent doctors. 
Sixty-four wounded Americans were left on the ground, under 
the care of Doctors Tod and Bowers, (the two surviving sur- 
geons,) with every assurance and full reliance that they would 
be kindly removed in sleds next day to Maiden. At sunrise, 
on the 23d, a large body of Indians stripped them, as they lay 
extended on the cold ground, tomahawked, and scalped all who 
were unable to march, (such was their frightful surgery,) and 



CHAP. IV.l M'AFEE'S ACCOUNT. J39 

took away a few surviving prisoners with them for further and 
more excruciating tortures. Among those assassinated, were 
Captains Hickman, Mead, Edwards, Price, M'Cracken, many- 
valuable and highly respectable subaltern officers and privates, 
nearly all of whom were among the most considerable citizens 
of Kentucky. Seldom, if ever, has a greater outrage been com- 
mitted. The murdered prisoners and poisoned wells imputed 
to Bonaparte in Egypt, were no worse than these barbarities, 
which are unquestionable, while the British Egyptian stories 
are as fabulous as many of the romances of that remote country. 
The unfortunate victims at Raisin were betrayed to their destruc- 
tion. I incorporate with my narrative, as more authentic and 
particular than anything I could give, the following account from 
Captain M'Afee. The troops within the picketing under Majors 
Graves and Madison, had, with Spartan valour, maintained their 
position, though powerfully assailed by Proctor and his savage 
allies. The British had posted a six-pounder behind a small house, 
about two hundred yards down the river, which considerably 
annoyed the camp till its supplies of ammunition, which were 
brought in a sleigh, were arrested by killing the horse and his 
driver. Major Graves, in passing round the lines, was wounded 
in the knee— he sat down, and bound it up himself, observing 
to his men, "nevermind me, but fight on." About ten o'clock, 
Colonel Proctor, finding it useless to sacrifice his men in vain 
attempts to dislodge this little band of heroes, withdrew his forces 
to the woods, intending either to abandon the contest, or to wait 
the return of the Indians, who had pursued the retreating party. 
The loss sustained by our men was inconsiderable ; and when 
Proctor withdrew, they employed the leisure it afforded them to 
take breakfast at their posts. 

As soon as Proctor was informed that General Winchester was 
taken, he basely determined to take advantage of his situation to 
procure the surrender of the party in the picketing. He repre- 
sented to the general, that nothing but an immediate surrender 
would save the Americans from an indiscriminate massacre by 
the Indians. A flag was then seen advancing from the British 
lines, carried by Major Overton, one of the general's aids, and 
accompanied by Colonel Proctor himself and several other offi- 
cers. Having halted at a respectful distance, Major Madison 
with Brigade-Major Garrard, proceeded to meet them, expecting 



140 M>AFEE'S ACCOUNT. [JAN., 1813. 

that the object of the flag was to obtain a cessation of hostilities for 
the British to bear off their dead. They were much mortified to 
find that Major Overton was the bearer of an order from General 
Winchester, directing the officer commanding the American forces 
to surrender them prisoners of war. This was the first intima- 
tion they had that their general had been taken. Colonel Proctor, 
with great haughtiness, demanded an immediate surrender, or he 
would set the town on fire, and the Indians would not be re- 
strained in committing an immediate massacre. Major Madison 
observed, "that it had been customary for the Indians to massacre 
the wounded and prisoners after a surrender, and that he would 
not agree to any capitulation which General Winchester might 
direct, unless the safety and protection of his men were stipulated." 
Colonel Proctor then said, " Sir, do you mean to dictate to me ?" 
" No," replied Madison, " I mean to dictate for myself, and we 
prefer selling our lives as dear as possible, rather than be massa- 
cred in cold blood." Proctor then agreed to receive a surrender 
on the following terms : that all private property should be re- 
spected, that sleds should be sent next morning to remove the sick 
and wounded to Amherstburg, on the island opposite Maiden, 
that, in the meantime, they should be protected by a guard, 
and that the side arms of the officers should be restored to them 
at Maiden. 

Major Madison, after consulting with Garrard, thought it most 
prudent to capitulate on these terms. Half the original force was 
already lost ; the rest would have to contend with more than 
three times their number ; there was no possible chance of a re- 
treat, nor any hope of a reinforcement to save them ; and worst 
of all, their ammunition was nearly exhausted, not more than one 
third of a small keg of cartridges being left. 

Among those who fell in the course of these two memorable 
days, were Colonel Allen, an eminent jurist, who would, in all 
probability, have been the next Governor of Kentucky, and Cap- 
tain Simpson, a member of Congress elect from that state, whose 
tall person, six feet six inches high, was an object of great admi- 
ration for the savages, as well as too good a mark for their rifles. 
They gathered round his body where he lay to admire its gigantic 
proportions. Among the prisoners, between 4 and 500, were 
General Winchester, Lieutenant-Colonel William Lewis, Major 
George Madison, Brigade-Inspector James Garrard, Junior, Adju- 



CHAP. IV.] ENGLISH ACCOUNTS. 141 

tant John M'Calla, Quarter Master Pollard Keen, Surgeon John 
Tod, with many officers of inferior rank. 

The Wyandot Indians, who were the principal perpetrators of 
the butchery, were considerably advanced in civilization, many 
of them tolerably educated, most of them professing the Christian 
religion, to which their progenitors had probably been converted 
by French missionaries. Frenchtown was a well improved vil- 
lage surrounded by cultivated gardens and fields, with a church 
and other evidences of advancement beyond the barbarism to 
which they were restored by shocking English subornation. 

Mr. Christie's English Narrative, published at Quebec, of the 
operations of the war, acknowledges, that what he calls the un- 
governable ferocity of their Indian allies, on the day after the 
battle slaughtered such of the wounded prisoners as were unable 
to walk, "at which," he adds, "humanity revolts, while declar- 
ing that it was done in spite of the British." Proctor's official 
account of the action, by letter to General Sir Roger Sheaffe, 
dated the 25th of January, 1S13, says, "that Brigadier-General 
Winchester was taken in the pursuit by the Wyandot chief Round- 
head, who surrendered him to me. The American force posted 
in houses and enclosures, which, from dread of falling into the 
hands of the Indians, they most obstinately defended, surrendered 
at discretion. This assertion is positively false. That nothing 
may be wanting to the enormity of this falsehood, Adjutant-Gene- 
ral Baynes' before mentioned report of the action, adds the ag- 
gravation, "that the gallantry of Colonel Proctor was most nobly 
displayed in his humane and unwearied exertions, which suc- 
ceeded in rescuing the vanquished from the revenge of the Indian 
warriors." Finally, the Governor-General Prevost's official dis- 
patch to Earl Bathurst, dated at Quebec, the 8th of February, 
and published by authority in the London Gazette of the 24th of 
April, 1813, contains no allusion whatever to the barbarities which 
took place. On the contrary, Colonel Proctor was, for the battle 
of the river Raisin, promoted to the rank of brigadier-general in 
Upper Canada, and continued in the enjoyment of his ill-got 
spoils, promotion and reputation for humanity as well as courage 
and conduct, till after his cowardly flight from the battle of 
the Thames, where he deserted his army, as will hereafter be 
shown, his baggage, his dispatches and his spoils, and disgracefully 
escaped with only seventeen men to Burlington heights ; when, 



142 GENERAL PROCTOR. [JAN., 1813. 

but not till then, he was reprimanded and publicly dishonoured in 
October, by the same governor-general who applauded and pro- 
moted him in February. Retribution for his crimes was not long 
deferred, and inflicted by his own superiors. If they had con- 
demned and rebuked the massacre at the river Raisin, at the mo- 
ment, as it required, it would have been much more deserving the 
boasted British character for honour and humanity. Christie, al- 
ways more candid than the English official accounts, says, " that 
Proctor having represented to his prisoner, Winchester, whom he 
received soon, after the commencement of the action, from the hands 
of the Wyandot chief Roundhead, that no responsibility would be 
taken for the conduct of the Indians, Winchester was induced 
thereby to send a flag of truce to his men, and agreed on their part 
to surrender, upon condition of their being protected from the fury 
of the savages, and allowed to preserve their private property." It 
is therefore no American misrepresentation of the transaction, as 
it actually occurred, but the truth as confessed by English history, 
well known to British officers at the time, that a vile falsehood 
prefaced an execrable massacre, contrary to the rules of war, and 
the feelings of humanity, for which the perpetrator was promoted 
from the command of a regiment to that of a brigade, received 
the thanks of his commanding officers for humanity, and was (for 
to be sure, but a brief period) the hero of a military achievement. 
Mr. Christie adds, " that Proctor's promotion by Prevost until the 
pleasure of the prince-regent should be known, was approved and 
confirmed by that great dispenser of British power and favour. 
At the same time the Canadian Assembly by resolution voted 
their thanks to Proctor for the exemplary humanity displayed by 
him in the moment of victory, which," Mr. Christie thinks" would 
not have been done if the assembly had been aware of the facts." 
Is it ungenerous to doubt whether they would have hesitated ? 
Until the overthrow of Napoleon enabled England to fill Canada, 
and indeed cover North America from Montreal to New Orleans, 
with British troops, the main reliance of her officers in Canada, 
for saving that province from conquest, was the use of those 
savages, who, in both her wars upon the United States, have fur- 
nished her most considerable and formidable power. The Cana- 
dian Assembly was part of the government which by Indian 
instrumentality preserved the province from conquest. When, 
therefore, the first steps were taken in the wicked employment of 



CHAP. IV.] INDIAN BARBARITIES. 143 

the savages, national passions excited, and prejudices enlisted, sup- 
pressing the truth was but an insignificant aggravation of the origi- 
nal offence. In the British accounts of the Canadian war, savage 
instrumentality is scarcely disguised, and always perceptible. His- 
tory has no more solemndnty to perform than to expose such cruelty 
to universal abhorrence. It has been a principal part of all English 
hostilities against their American kindred ever since denounced 
by Chatham in 1777, in the House of Lords, "as warfare of the 
tomahawk and scalping knife, worse than that of blood-hounds, 
atrocities degrading the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious 
war, which makes ambition virtue." Though thus denounced 
in the solemn assembly of British nobles, prelates and princes, of 
course, therefore, well known to the English government, it seems 
to be impossible that it can be known to a people, who have long 
since by negotiations, great expenditures and almost in arms, 
been labouring to put an end to the slave trade, certainly a much 
less atrocious national violation of humanity. 

The brave Kentuckians, captured and disarmed by artifice and 
falsehood, preserved to the last their spirits unbroken. General 
Winchester, Colonel Lewis and Major Madison were sent pri- 
soners to Quebec and remained a long time in captivity. Besides 
courage and constancy, the Kentucky volunteers always display- 
ed a cheerful endurance of hardship and privation, a buoyancy 
of spirit and alacrity for duty, deserving of especial applause. 
They had been long encamped under trying circumstances, before 
marched to the unhappy end of their campaign on the Raisin. 

The left-wing of the northwestern army under General Win- 
chester, after relieving Fort Wayne, in September, moved down 
to the site of old Fort Defiance, where these troops built Fort 
Winchester. That wing was composed exclusively of Kentucky 
volunteers and regulars. There they remained until November, 
and built pirogues, or large canoes, for the transportation of bag- 
gage on the Maumee down to the Rapids. To pass some shoals, 
however, the army moved down the river about six miles, and 
encamped at what was afterwards called camp No. 3. At that 
camp the volunteers received the clothing which their friends in 
Kentucky had prepared for them, the weather being then very 
cold; a supply doubly acceptable, as coming in such good time, 
but more especially as having been the spontaneous product of 



144 KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS. [JAN., 1813. 

the affection and regard of the matrons and young women of 
their native homes. There was one regiment of regulars at the 
camp whose clothing had not arrived. Although there was 
both ice and snow, and very cold weather, they were in their 
linen fatigue dresses. The officers of the volunteers proposed to 
General Winchester, and even generously insisted on being al- 
lowed to do all the camp and detachment service, and to permit 
the destitute regulars to remain by their fires, and do nothing but 
provide their own fuel, until they were supplied with winter 
clothing, which was done, and cemented the good feeling exist- 
ing between the two services to a high degree. 

The troops were picketed at camp No. 3, and remained there 
awaiting supplies to enable them to advance, which never came. 
At one time the whole left wing at No. 3 were fourteen days 
without the slightest supply of flour, the ration consisting of one 
and a half pounds of beef alone : and that beef was the car- 
cases of cattle killed in a state of famine to prevent their natural 
death. Hickory roots, elm bark and beech nuts made up the 
ration. 

About the 8th January orders were issued to march to the 
Rapids. That march was made through a snow twenty-seven 
inches on a dead level. On the march those brave men har- 
nessed themselves to sleighs and drew their baggage. On arriv- 
ing at the rapids, after remaining a day or two, orders were given 
for the advance to the river Raisin ; also through deep snow, or 
over ice on the border of the lake. They marched 18 miles the 
first day and 18 miles by 3 o'clock the second day, went at once 
into action, and kept it up until 6 o'clock. 

On the 22d of January, until the order was given to surrender, 
the soldiers who remained in the pickets believed that they had 
won the day, and were rejoicing at it. When informed of the 
true state of the case, and that they were prisoners of war, many 
of them loudly refused to obey, others shed tears of rage ; some 
broke their guns over the pickets behind which they were 
standing. 

When at Maiden, news of the massacre of their wounded 
comrades reached them, disarmed, the scene was terrible. Two 
or three had left brothers behind them, who they thus knew 
were butchered, and all lost dear friends or comrades. It was 



CHAP. IV.] CAMP MEIGS. 145 

a scene of such poignant but manly grief and rage as might have 
been expected from such men in such a situation. 

After being detained in Maiden four days they were conducted 
by Detroit, over Lake St. Clair, to the mouth of the Thames, up 
which they marched 90 miles, thence across to and down Grand 
River to Lake Ontario and to Fort George, all the time through 
snow and very cold weather, where they were paroled not to 
serve until exchanged, and put across to Fort Niagara. Hence 
the late prisoners travelled to Buffalo, to Erie, to Pittsburgh, and 
down to Maysville in Kentucky, and home, having marched, 
during the campaign, a round of about 1300 miles. 

General Harrison was warmly censured and defended for not 
immediately advancing to avenge General Winchester's defeat, 
when he met some of the fugitives escaping from the action. The 
secretary of war, Armstrong, who never omitted a fling at him, said 
that Harrison and Proctor were always the terror of each other, 
and mostly without cause. As an act of humanity, Harrison might 
have run every risk to hasten to the banks of the river Raisin. But. 
as a military commander, with all the responsibility of a critical 
predicament, without personal apprehension, he might well hesi- 
tate to go. That consideration often deters the bravest men. 
General Harrison, always brave, was seldom bold ; and if, when 
he considered the case desperate, he had advanced, that very 
sentiment would have prevented his success, and might have 
much increased the disaster. The whole frontier and campaign 
were in his charge. If his defeat or capture had been superadded 
to that of Winchester, the campaign would have ended by laying 
bare the frontiers of Ohio and Pennsylvania to Indian depreda- 
tions and probably extensive devastation. 

Retreating therefore to his post on the Miami, he went to work 
to fortify it by the title of camp Meigs ; all further advance into 
the enemy's territories being necessarily abandoned for the pre- 
sent. Instead of invading and retaking Michigan, American 
hostilities were reduced to defending the western states from 
invasion by the allied English and Indians, for which purpose 
Fort Meigs was a useful, if not indispensable rampart. Bv 
Winchester's defeat and the failure of Harrison's winter campaign, 
to whatever causes attributable, and whoever was to blame, if 
any one, more than the inexperience of most of the commanding 
officers, and the rawness of all the troops, the whole character of 
vol. i. — 13 



146 CAMP MEIGS. [MAY, 1813. 

hostilities was reversed, and we were thrown back upon the 
defensive, until Perry gained his victory upon Lake Erie. Fort 
Meigs, by General Harrison's direction, was skillfully constructed 
by Colonel Wood, an excellent engineer, killed next year at the 
boldest and most brilliant exploit of the whole northern war, — 
the sortie under General Brown from Fort Erie. General Har- 
rison withstood two sieges in Fort Meigs, of which the president 
in his annual message to Congress, when we met in December 
that year, made the usual felicitous display for a state paper not 
abounding in materials for public exultation. But I shall not 
dwell upon those passive sieges, because though there were oc- 
currences there deserving recollection, yet others are now at hand 
of more importance, particularly an American victory on land 
which took place the 2d of August, 1813, the last day of the first 
session of Congress that year, that seemed to be a turning point 
in the fortunes of our warfare in the west; for with Croghan's 
success English reverses began which led to their expulsion from 
that region. Fort Meigs was besieged by Proctor and Tecumseh, 
with several thousand English and Indians approaching by land 
and water, who, after many days bombardment, were compelled 
to retire. Indians, even under so valiant a leader as Tecumseh, 
are of little use for besieging a fortified place ; and without the 
Indians, the English seldom performed much. On the 5th of 
May, General Green Clay arrived in the neighbourhood of Fort 
Meigs with twelve hundred fresh Kentucky militia, destined, like 
those in January, to partial success, and then great discomfiture. 
They were ordered by General Harrison to attack the British re- 
doubts on one side of the river, in concert with a sortie from Fort 
Meigs, which vigorously assailed the enemy on the other side. 
The sortie was headed by Colonel John Miller, of the 19th regi- 
ment of regulars, afterwards Governor of Missouri, who was a 
member with me of the twenty-seventh Congress. General Harri- 
son's plan on this occasion was not only good but well executed, 
but for one of those misfortunes which seemed to be inseparable 
from our arms until to superabundant bravery our men added 
knowledge of the art of war. Obedience, subordination, unity of 
action in different corps are lessons to be learned by the bravest 
men, without which, success in arms is extremely problematical. 
General Harrison's orders to Clay's corps were positive to make 
their way into Fort Meigs as soon as they drove the English 



CHAP. IV.] AMERICAN DEFEAT. 247 

from the position assigned for their attack. Both the attacks 
succeeded completely. Miller with the regulars gallantly stormed 
the redoubts on one side, while the Kentucky militia with equal 
celerity drove the British and Indians before them on the other 
side. But eager to pursue the Indians, and disregarding their 
orders, they strayed so far in pursuit of the retreating enemy as to 
allow Proctor and Tecumseh to intercept, surround, and overcome 
them. One half their number was either killed or taken. Not 
more than a moiety of General Clay's troops made good their 
arrival at Fort Meigs. Thus another reverse was the result of 
rash confidence, and want of discipline, the insensibility of inex- 
perienced troops to the vital importance of implicit obedience, 
perhaps on this, as on many other occasions, to the want of that 
energetic control by a commander, without which, even discipline 
and obedience often fail. Hitherto war had been confined to the 
sorry endeavour to defend the country from invasion, while its 
numerical and physical power, if well directed, was able to have 
made itself felt in large conquests of extensive foreign territories. 
General Harrison, leaving Fort Meigs in charge of General Clay, 
busied himself during the rest of the summer of 1813 elsewhere 
in further preparations to recover the ground which Hull lost, 
and he would hardly have been able to regain, but for the cap- 
ture of the British fleet on the lake ; for which Captain Perry 
was building vessels at Erie, in Pennsylvania; the British fleet 
under Commodore Barclay holding the undisputed command. 
Nearly two summers, an autumn and spring of gloomy discom- 
fitures and wretched mismanagement had occurred since the de- 
claration of war, with scarce one solitary gleam of relief by land, 
where our strength and English weakness were supposed to be. 
At length, on the day Congress adjourned, the 2d August, 181 3, our 
first success in the northwest broke out from unexpected circum- 
stances. Harrison had stationed a very young captain of the 
regular army, George Croghan, with a few also very young com- 
panions, about 150, in a weak fort called Fort Stephenson, on 
lower Sandusky, a place not well chosen for the purpose, whose 
young commander was left in it with perplexing orders. Croghan's 
orders from Harrison were to abandon the fort, should the enemy 
approach in force, with cannon, and retreat, should retreat then 
be practicable. Proctor and Tecumseh advanced upon Fort Ste- 
phenson in such force that to retreat was much more hazardous 



148 FORT STEPHENSON. [AUG., 1813. 

than to remain. Captain Croghan, however, required no such 
dilemma to induce his answering Proctor's summons with defi- 
ance. By this time the savages had become the boast, as well as 
the power of General Proctor, who sent to Croghan the hackneyed 
menace of indiscriminate slaughter by ungovernable Indians, if 
the fort was not surrendered without assault. The brave young 
commander answered that it was his duty to defend it and that 
he should do his duty. The bearer of the summons to surren- 
der was the half-breed Elliott, who said at the massacre on the 
Raisin, that Indians are excellent surgeons. Hull's dread of 
them produced his deplorable surrender a year before. Vile use 
made by Proctor, with Elliott's aid, of the terror of the savages 
was attended by fatal consequences at the river Raisin. But 
this contrivance had no effect at Fort Stephenson. — There was 
but one cannon in that poor fort, which required great good 
management and good fortune, as well as calm courage, to 
defend it and repulse the assault, as was admirably done. In 
the broad day-light of a dog-day sun, it was attempted, with the 
confidence then become habitual with the British soldiery, who 
had, as yet, never failed, by force or fraud, to vanquish our 
people. Deserted by their savage allies, who are of little use 
for storming forts, the English were gallantly and profanely led to 
the assault by Lieutenant-Colonel Short, cheering on his follow- 
ers, with oaths, to give no quarter to the Americans. By a well- 
directed discharge of their solitary cannon, reserved till the 
proper moment, the assailants were so many of them killed, 
that their repulse was complete, and our victory instantaneous. 
Proctor and Tecumseh then led their forces back to Maiden. 
Small as this harbinger of our successes in the northwest was, it 
was hailed with great and general gratification. The author of 
the manifesto of the causes and character of the war, Mr. Dallas, 
was my communicant of the news, as I was his next year of the 
victory at New Orleans to him. 

During the affair at Fort Stephenson, General Harrison, a 
humane and kindly disposed man, never confident, much less 
sanguinary, was distressed at Fort Meigs by apprehensions for 
the result. The enemy's force was so superior, and the young 
men in charge of the fort so inexperienced, that he feared the 
worst consequences. 

Six weeks after that beginning, Perry's capture of the British 



CHAP. IV.] PERRY'S VICTORY. 149 

fleet on Lake Erie, opened the way to Harrison's capture of 
Proctor on the Thames, and the relief of the entire west from 
British thraldom ; except, however, Mackinaw, which they con- 
tinued to hold. An expedition for its recapture by Croghan 
failed for want of adequate force, without coming to blows ; 
and need not, therefore, be more than thus cursorily mentioned. 

Two of the most distinguished American authors, Washington 
Irving, in the Analectic Review, and Fenimore Cooper, in his 
Naval History, have described the battle on Lake Erie; of which 
also many other accounts are in print. It would be superfluous, 
therefore, to attempt more than some gleaning after those abun- 
dant harvests of history. From the moment that Captain Perry, 
by order of Commodore Chauncey, commander-in-chief of the 
lakes, repaired to Lake Erie, his conduct was uniformly marked 
by industry, activity, courage, discretion, and the success such 
qualities seldom fail to yield. From first to last the superiority 
of American to British seamen was conspicuous. Perry, then 
twenty-seven years of age, was a volunteer from the sea to the 
lake service, in search of distinction. With indefatigable atten- 
tion and excellent judgment, he built, equipped, armed, manned, 
and got his fleet upon the water, with great expedition, resolu- 
tion, and adroitness in the face of a superior enemy, having 
command of the lake, blockading Erie, the town where Perry's 
squadron was prepared for service, and where a more enterpriz- 
ing, or more fortunate or strenuous enemy would have confined 
or destroyed it. There were several feet less water on the bar 
at Erie than were required to float the American vessels out of 
port, which was, nevertheless, accomplished, in spite of the 
British, by admirable contrivance, boldness, and seamanship. 
No sooner afloat than Perry offered battle several times, always 
declined by his antagonist, though the British force was superior. 
There were 500 men in the British squadron, against 400 in the 
American. Perry and many of his men were disqualified by 
lake sickness, and when they captured the British squadron, 
there were more British prisoners than Americans to take charge 
of them. It has been contended, in disparagement of Perry's 
merits, that but few of the British crews were full seamen, many of 
them Canadians, and the marines artillerists taken from the forts. 
But they had the advantage of much longer service on the lake, 
than either Perry or his men, some of whom were volunteers 

13* 



150 PERRY'S VICTORY. [SEPT., 1813. 

from shore, and none of them practised in lake navigation. 
There were six more cannons in the British than in the American 
fleet; the British metal was probably heavier, so it was always 
believed, till that point has been latterly brought into question, 
and their gunpowder was much better. Still, in this, as in 
every other naval engagement throughout the war, the superi- 
ority of American gunnery was obvious. How can it be other- 
wise, between those accustomed to the constant use of firearms, 
if the inhabitants of frontiers, living by them ; and Englishmen, 
of whom numbers are punished every year, by the severe 
penalties of the game laws, for using arms at all ? Nor was 
there as much alacrity in the English squadron as in the Ameri- 
can to come to action. It is not certain that the war would not 
have ended on Lake Erie, as it did on Lake Ontario, without 
any naval engagement, owing to the British marine declining 
that trial, if the British commander on Lake Erie had not been 
constrained to put out from Maiden, and risk a general action. 
By remaining there, leaving Perry in command of the lake, the 
English forces became straitened for supplies, and Captain Bar- 
clay had no option but to put out and fight, when he encountered 
his opponent. Odious comparisons of these two brave commo- 
dores are unnecessary, and were never introduced by American 
notices of their conflict. On the 9th September, Barclay sailed 
forth. As soon as Perry heard of it, on the 10th, he also made 
sail from Put-in-Bay, where his fleet was at anchor. As the fleets 
neared each other, the wind was unfavourable to Perry, who went 
to battle leaving his enemy the advantage of the weather-gage. 
A fortunate change of wind during the anxious moments of ap- 
proximation gave to Perry that advantage which he was willing 
to forego. He was much younger than the English commander, 
who had learned his duties under Nelson at the battle of Trafal- 
gar, where that heroic admiral executed the master-stroke of 
British naval superiority by breaking through the opposing 
fleet, cutting it asunder and subjecting it to still greater disadvan- 
tage than a hostile army must undergo from being out-flanked 
and beset at the same moment rear and front. Perry and his 
young comrades had never seen the effect of a broadside. The 
whole art of naval combat by fleets was a mystery to them. 
But their enthusiasm was guided by that calmness which is the 
life of hostilities, and from first to last on that glorious day. 



CHAP. IV.] PERRY'S VICTORY. 151 

good fortune never failed to attend their noble daring. Perry's 
ship, leading into action, for a long time bore the brunt. When 
completely disabled, most of the crew killed or wounded, guns 
dismounted, equipments dismantled, the vessel a mere unma- 
nageable wreck, Perry himself, without a scar, under the influ- 
ence of one of those revelations of genius, which are decisive, 
got into his boat and had himself rowed, through showers of 
musketry, to Elliott's ship, which had not been injured. In 
that uninjured vessel, after a short consultation between those 
two young commanders, Perry, with the blessing of a favour- 
able breeze just then springing up, made for and broke through 
the enemy's line, firing broadsides right and left with great effect. 
At the same time Elliott, by similar boldness, got into his boat 
and rowing through a shower of balls which covered him with 
their splashing in the water, instantly brought up the smaller 
vessels from their distant places to support their commander. In 
a very minutes the whole British fleet was subdued. The same 
afternoon Perry dispatched his classically short and pregnant 
letters to General Harrison and the secretary of the navy. A 
month afterwards, on the 8th October, 1813, the Canadian Com- 
mander-in-Chief Prevost's official letter to Bathurst, the Colonial 
Secretary, makes the remarkable acknowledgment that all Pre- 
vost then knew of the defeat of the British squadron on Lake 
Erie was derived from the American account of it, "the only 
one," says the English commander, " I can expect to receive for 
a great length of time, in consequence of the dangerous situation 
of Captain Barclay, and of the death, wounds, or captivity of 
all the officers serving under him." 

Barclay took his fleet out of port to fight, because otherwise, 
Perry deprived the English forces of supplies. Perry instantly 
led out his, despising the nautical superstition that Friday is un- 
lucky. He saw, or thought he saw, an eagle soaring above his 
masts, on whose lofty tops the flag of his country waved in 
western sunshine, cheerful acceptance of the omen. 

Commodore Barclay's official dispatch, dated at Put-in-Bay, 
Lake Erie, 12th Sept. 1813, was not published in the London 
Gazette till the 8th of February, 1814. At a public ball given 
to him at Terrebonne, in Canada, on the 20th of April, Barclay's 
just and manly toast was " Co??imodore Perry, the gallant and 
generous enemy." The candour and feeling of that brave man 



152 PERRY'S VICTORY. [SEPT., 1813. 

were contrasted with the misconduct of Captain Garden, and 
many other British officers placed in a similar situation. Barclay 
dared to speak the truth, which was no small daring to the 
British government and people. His official account of the bat- 
tle, not merely confessed the reluctance with which he engaged 
in it, but pleaded the small number of experienced British sea- 
men in his squadron, and the extreme scarcity of provisions, with 
which both the land and naval forces of the English in that 
quarter were straitened. He was obliged, in short, he said, to 
relieve himself and them from blockade by Perry's squadron. 
In fact, we were indebted to Major- General Proctor for the capture 
of Barclay's fleet. Urged by scarcity, and by Proctor, whose in- 
structions Barclay was directed to consult, and whose wishes he 
was enjoined to execute, the English commodore ventured forth 
to the necessity, as he owned, of risking a battle. His object was 
to bring Perry to action among the islands, which was frustrated 
by the fortunate change of wind, shifting the weather-gage 
from the English to the American squadron. Barclay's fleet 
fired for thirty minutes before Perry returned a shot. The day 
was against the American commodore in the British commodore's 
opinion, when the Englishman witnessed the American trans- 
ferring his flag on which was inscribed, ''Don't give up the ship!" 
from his own disabled brig to the fresh and uninjured one of Cap- 
tain Elliott, his second in command. But Lieutenant George 
Inglis, who took command when Barclay was obliged to go 
below, was soon compelled to say that the British flag was struck 
when he and Captain Barclay just before thought they had the 
best of the action.. 

Thoughtful men of mature age, like Harrison, though not 
fearing danger or death, still dread the responsibility of decision 
and the disgrace of failure. Young men, like Croghan, Perry 
and Elliott, fear nothing, but brave at once, both the responsi- 
bility and the danger. Yet in all their conduct, old heads were 
united with young hearts. As the professional particulars of their 
conflict are vividly explained by Mr. Irving and Mr. Cooper, no- 
thing remains for commemoration but some of its philosophy and 
patriotism. From first to last there was, as it were, special Pro- 
vidence in the whole contest on Lake Erie, by no means con- 
cluded in national vindication with the victory. Then came the 
young victor's noble rebuke of British inhumanity. Christie says, 



CHAP. IV.] PERRY'SVICTORY. 153 

" the prisoners were landed at Sandusky and treated with the 
gratest humanity by the American commodore, who paroled Cap- 
tain Barclay, and treated that gallant officer with all the kindness 
and attention which his unsuccessful bravery deserved." The 
bones of the wounded American prisoners murdered in cold 
blood at Frenchtown, the day after they surrendered to English 
captors, were bleaching, exposed, unburied on the banks of the 
Raisin. The common decency of burial had been denied the 
brave victims of that massacre. The day after the battle on the 
lake, the American and English wounded were alike and toge- 
ther soothed by every kindness and nursed by suitable attend- 
ants. The dead of both nations were interred on the next Sun- 
day in a common grave. Military honours were performed at 
their funeral. Religious rites consecrated their consignment to 
the earth. After the English left the victims of their massacre 
on the Raisin to putrefy on the earth, for hogs to mutilate still 
further, Colonel Johnson with a detachment of his regiment, in 
June, gathered and buried them. As Governor Shelby returned 
with the Kentucky levies, in October, after Harrison's victory of 
the Thames, the detestable barbarism was discovered of the mur- 
dered Kentuckians having been dragged from their graves and 
once more exposed on the surface of the ground ; they were again, 
for the second and last time, under Shelby's superintendence, 
gathered and interred. 

Mr. Washington Irving, in his account of the naval engage- 
ments between the United States and Great Britain, without di- 
rect disparagement of his countrymen, indirectly does them injus- 
tice by not contrasting their uniform humanity and gentlemanly 
kindness, with the rough, supercilious, and often cruel behaviour 
which marked the English officers. Not to mention these cir- 
cumstances would be to suppress the truth of history, and the just 
characteristics of kindred nations brought into national collision. 
Makirfg every allowance for the prejudices which must necessa- 
rily obscure such a topic, it is nevertheless undeniable, that, in 
general, the English were haughty, harsh, and sometimes cruel; 
while the Americans were hardly ever, if ever so. Especially 
is this vindication of the American character appropriate, when- 
ever western or frontier Americans, particularly Kentuckians, 
came to blows with the English. The Kentuckians were men- 
tioned in all English accounts as barbarians, not much less fero- 



154 PERRY'S VICTORY. [SEPT., 1813. 

cious than the Indians. Yet certainly their breeding and humanity- 
were superior to the English. May habitual European insolence 
and habitual American reverence be imputed to arrogated supe- 
riority of the old world, and assumed inferiority of the new ? 
Never afraid to fight their foes, the Americans seemed, neverthe- 
less, over anxious for their good will, and solicitous of their con- 
descension. Commodore Barclay's official account of his defeat 
ascribes it, mainly, to the want of British seamen, and the sub- 
stitution of Canadians in their places ; when certainly, the Cana- 
dian boatmen, for lake service, are much better qualified, and the 
American seamen more active, intelligent, enterprising, tractable 
and sober than the boasted British mariner. National compari- 
son may have,at least, the salutary effect of satisfying Americans 
that they are equal to Englishmen ; a conviction which, till the 
war of 1S12, had but little foothold in this country, was derided 
in Great Britain, and discountenanced throughout Europe. 

Mr. Christie angrily and effectually rebukes and disproves the 
preposterous English arrogance which assigns to all mankind, 
even Welshmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, (not only Germans, 
Spaniards, Frenchmen and Americans,) inferiority to Englishmen, 
arrogance to which too many Americans yield. Christie says, 
" that the provincial officers compelled to fall into the rear of those 
of the royal navy, were uniformly successful, and not excelled 
by any thing performed on the lakes by the officers of the navy 
who superseded the provincial officers. The former were, per- 
haps, superior in tactics, and cherished a hearty, though mistaken 
contempt for the Americans, in which they have been since wo- 
fully undeceived. The provincial officers were surely not less 
brave, though more prudent than the former, and as things have 
turned out, our fleets on Lakes Erie and Champlain might as well 
have been entrusted to provincial, as navy officers. The former 
with one or two exceptions, have been always more successful 
on the lakes than the latter." Such is the sentiment of a British 
subject on the unworthy attempt to depreciate the victory on 
Lake Erie because won over Canadian not British seamen. Na- 
tional vanity is often the worst of national prejudices. 

Long after Perry's success, controversy arose between detract- 
ors and supporters of Captain Elliott, as to his share in the Lake 
Erie triumph. Harrison and Johnson's respective adherents have 
also contested the merit of suddenly suggesting the charge of 



CHAP. IV.] PERRY AND ELLIOTT. 155 

cavalry by which the latter accomplished the former's victory at 
the Thames: idle and invidious controversies. Hamilton's in- 
discreet admirers would deprive Washington of the merit of his 
farewell address to his countrymen. Cannot the invidious and 
envious see that great occasions yield credit enough for all par- 
ties to them ; and that each diminishes his own by begrudging or 
disparaging another's? The debasing infatuation of envy, Ho- 
race says, characterizes mediocrity ; and Ovid calls it its own ex- 
ecutioner. Perry's success by water, which superinduced Har- 
rison's by land, broke down the Indian and English alliance, and 
relieved the whole west from farther molestation. In such achieve- 
ments there is glory enough for all participants. The scale of 
operations was smaller, the fleets and troops less numerous than 
in the great conflicts of European hostilities. But territories 
were freed from molestation more extensive than the islands of 
Great Britain. 

The naval action on Lake Erie abounded in dramatic incidents, 
with most of which, however, the public are familiar. Friday, 
10th Sept., 1813, was a clear day of western sunshine. The lake 
was placid, with a gentle ripple at first, afterwards increasing with 
the wind to greater undulations of the waves. The British ships 
were all fresh painted, their canvas perfectly white as displayed 
to the wind, and as they approached the American squadron, fine 
English bands of music played Rule Britannia. When the British 
bugle sounded for action, the crews of their vessels gave loud 
huzzas ; cheering throughout the action, as they generally do 
more than ours. On board the British commodore's ship, the 
Detroit, there were three Indian warriors, making their first essay 
in naval combat. They were placed in the round tops, with 
rifles, to pick off the American officers. It was a bright cloud- 
less morning, and the savages took their novel stations with great 
ardour for the kind of bloodshed they delight in. The action 
beginning with the fleets considerably separated, rifle shooting 
was of no use, while broadsides reverberated over the waters 
and cannon balls whistled through the rigging too near the In- 
dians for their encouragement ; they therefore went down upon 
the deck. That, when the vessels closed, was a still more dan- 
gerous position, covered with dead and wounded, broken spars 
and dismantled equipments. The three warriors went below, 
where they were found concealed by the American officer who 



156 PERRY'S VICTORY. [SEPT., 1813. 

took possession of the Detroit. Her co^urs were nailed to the 
mast, and were with some difficulty taken down by the Ameri- 
cans extracting the nails. There was also a large bear on board 
that vessel, which was found in the enjoyment of lapping the blood 
from her decks after the battle. 

Thus by the heroism and good fortune of a young man, Oliver 
Hazard Perry, of Rhode Island, whose father Captain Christo- 
pher Perry, commanded the frigate General Greene in the war of 
the Revolution, and whose two brothers were at the time of this 
victory serving on board the frigate President, was the tide of 
American success in the northwest, turned at once from ebb to 
flood. Without a spar when he began to cope with a command- 
ing British squadron on Lake Erie, Perry raised a fleet from the 
surrounding forests, and in a single summer extinguished forever 
the power of Great Britain on the American lakes, and liberated 
forever several of these United States from Indian molestation. 
The three Secretaries of the Navy during that war, Hamilton, 
Jones and Crowninshield, had, no one of them, adequate ideas of 
our commanding the lakes. General Armstrong boasted that he 
suggested it. Whoever did so, it was Perry by whom the achieve- 
ment was performed ; for his complete triumph did not stop with 
Erie, but shed its encouraging influences on Ontario and Cham- 
plain. Since the battle of Lake Erie, Great Britain has expended 
large sums ; constructed the Welland and Rideau canals, and 
what Perry could not then conceive, steam has unlocked the wa- 
ters of America to wonderful navigation. Europe and America, 
then a month or more, are now only a fortnight or less apart ; 
Liverpool and Bristol draw nigh the seaports of Cleveland, 
Detroit and Mackinaw. 

Such is reality and history. What will fiction and romance 
make of the lake regions for the part which their wonderful des- 
tinies hereafter are unfolding? A naval engagement, by con- 
siderable fleets, many hundred miles from the high seas, on the 
vast fresh water Mediterranean oceans of this continent signal- 
ized the seamanship and enterprize of two kindred people. They 
spoke the same language, their complexion was the same. Thou- 
sands of red warriors anxiously awaited the issue on the surround- 
ing shores ; which, for the distance of a hundred miles heard the 
reports of their broadsides, carried by water over that great space. 
While these hordes of red savages listened all around for who 



CHAP. IV.] LAKE WAR. 157 

should be their masters, another race, of a different colour from 
either, neither white nor red, but black, was also awaiting else- 
where the result as decisive of their fate. May not romance and 
poetry find pathos and legend in these occurrences ? From the 
copper mines of Lake Superior, through Huron, Michigan, and 
Erie, to the rushing falls of Niagara, what regions for industry, for 
history, and for poetry! The limitary St. Lawrence, flowing north, 
while almost every other great river of this continent pursues a 
southern course, seems to declare itself a British stream ; a world 
of magnificent waters and territories, yet to be disputed between 
Great Britain and the United States, but whose innumerable 
millions of inhabitants are all to speak English, extending from 
Nova Scotia to Oregon, thence to the Gulf of Mexico. As indus- 
try improves this new world, history will tell of its original inha- 
bitants, and poetry embellish the accounts. Two hundred years 
before Perry and Barclay fought on Lake Erie, an Indian tradi- 
tion, as narrated by Walk-in-the-water, a Wyandot chieftain, 
preserves the particulars of a naval engagement there, as follows 
— not more legendary than most histories. 



vol. i. — 14 



158 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 



CHAPTER V. 

WALK-IN-THE-WATER'S TRADITION OF THE INDIAN NAVAL ENGAGE- 
MENT ON LAKE ERIE. 

The Wyandots are considerably advanced in civilization, 
familiar with much of its arts, manners and customs. They are 
lioman Catholic Christians, converted probably by early French 
missionaries, to that persuasion. In 1813, they had a fine steepled 
church at Sandwich, opposite to Detroit. Many of their head 
men had been at Washington, as well as at the Canadian seats of 
refined life, with which they were not unacquainted. The Eng- 
lish provincial authorities had long courted their alliance, and they 
were decided in adhesion to their father, the King of Great Bri- 
tain, who supplied them with arms, and other objects of desire. 
Their language is unlike that of all the other tribes of the west, 
which appear to be dialects of the same tongue. But that of the 
Wyandots is peculiar to themselves, not a word common to the 
rest. One of its singularities is, that it is without labials, so that 
they speak always with the mouth open. In other respects, like 
all savages, the Wyandots resemble all mankind in attachment to 
roving, warring, and idle life. Like the rest, too, they are addicted 
to merriment, jocularity and good cheer. A vein of irony, with 
touches of European allusion, in the following narrative, may be 
ascribable to others than the Wyandot chief. The substance, 
however, especially the facts of an elopement, war, naval engage- 
ment and the national results are Walk-in-the-water'sown story. 

More than two hundred snows ago, (about the time of the 
earliest English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts, be- 
fore Pennsylvania, or most of the other states were occupied 
but by Indians), the Wyandot nation dwelt on the northern side 
of Lake Ontario, and the river St. Lawrence, in the portion of 
Canada stretching from Kingston to Toronto ; at least their 
hunting grounds extended over that space, embracing in their 
range the Falls of Niagara. The Seneca Indians then inhabited 



CHAP. V.] ' INDIAN WARFARE. 159 

the eastern or southern side of that river and lake, in what are 
now the western counties of the state of New York. The 
Wyandots and Senecas were too near neighbours not to be 
enemies. They quarreled about fishing grounds, game pre- 
serves, and other subjects of dispute, which produced frequent 
hostilities, and continual animosity, till at the time before mention- 
ed exterminating warlbroke out, and closed with the destructive 
naval action on Lake Erie, of which that of Perry and Barclay 
drew this traditionary account from Walk-in-the-water. — The 
cause of this fatal and final struggle, was the same which brought 
sin into the world with all its woes, the same which inspired 
Homer's Iliad, the same which led Louis the Fourteenth to ravage 
the fairest parts of Germany, the cause of much of the troubles of 
mankind — an unchaste woman. The wife of a Seneca chief ena- 
moured a Wyandot warrior. In summer he paddled his canoe, 
in winter he crossed on the ice over the waters, mostly by night, 
to visit this squaw. Tall and straight, with long black hair, the 
only covering of her neck and person to the waist, a girdle of 
deer skin was her whole dress, bear's grease her cosmetic, bone 
bracelets and shells her few ornaments. Her feet were as large 
as those which ancient statues attribute to goddesses contrary to 
modern taste. She painted freely — several coats. Water was 
her looking-glass, and smoking her chief recreation. She was cook, 
gardener, nurse and chamber-maid ; what little vegetable food was 
used in the family she sowed, gathered, boiled and dished ; sewed 
hides with fish bones, ground Indian corn between stones in her 
lap, of which she had not much, as she wore no petticoats or 
shift. Her Wyandot lover was marked all over by figures of 
birds, beasts, and reptiles, indelibly burned into his skin by red 
hot charcoal. His ears were cut so as to be hung with much 
larger pendants than ladies can attach to the ear not prepared 
in that way. He had large pendants at his nose, too ; feathers in 
tufts on his head, and sometimes so fastened to his person behind 
as to look like the tail of a pheasant or peacock. He was as 
vain of dress as George the Fourth, whose best years, after the 
vices of youth, were spent in devising ornaments either for per- 
sons, furniture, or houses. The pretext for the Wyandot's visits to 
the woman he had seduced, was gambling with her husband, of 
which high-bred entertainment they were passionately fond. With 
pebbles and shells for dice, they played for bear's meat and deer 



160 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

« 

skins, till at one excited bout the Seneca staked his wife, and the 
Wyandot won her. The Seneca refused to pay this debt of 
honour. The Wyandot challenged him to fight with stone toma- 
hawks, stone headed arrows, or any other weapons at any distance 
the Seneca might choose, to whom belonged the choice of time, 
place and instruments. Instead of personal satisfaction, however, 
the affair took a worse turn. The lover administered philters 
to the unconscious female in snake soup, of which she was fond. 
He had besides consulted the stars and operated on her nervous 
system by sorcery and signs ; and so undermined or overcome 
her fidelity, that one stormy night in the dead of winter she eloped 
with him. She was neither young nor handsome, had several 
surviving children, besides some she had drowned with her hus- 
band's help, because they were born weak or ugly ; and was of 
that mature age when elegant and educated ladies leave their 
husbands and children to elope with lovers. Vagaries of love 
are less the resort of the young and handsome, than their elders, 
and increase with age in both sexes. The Queen of England 
lately conferred a dukedom on an old woman for clandestine 
union with her uncle the Duke of Sussex. The late devout kings 
of Prussia and Holland, both set their adult children the example 
of marrying contrary to law. In the illegitimate connection of 
the Wyandot chief with the Seneca married woman, there 
was nothing unusual. The lover plucked his beard with more 
than usual attention, so as to leave not a hair on his chin, 
cut the hair from his head, all except the coronal lock which 
gracefully fell in plaits down his back, tied up his stomach tight, 
so as to mortify hunger, put on snow-shoes to prevent sinking in 
I hat hindrance, and every way prepared for a long journey, car- 
ried off the squaw while her husband was abroad and the children 
asleep. Before his return the guilty couple were far away to- 
wards the north-west. 

The flight of the lovers was through vast forests, deep paved 
with snow, leafless, storm shaken, and to all but lovers, might 
have seemed cold and dreary. But the runagates slept happily on 
their bear skin, and took long walks with short rests, out of reach 
of any combination of pursuers. They reposed one night at the 
Falls of Niagara. That magnificent mist was then environed by 
various forms of waters frozen into innumerable sparkling and 
grotesque crystalizations. Icicles of immense size hung from 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. |gl 

the precipice glittering with prismatic brilliancy. The eternal 
roar of the waterfall was deadened by sharp cold, though the 
air was more resonant than usual. All was vast solitude of inter- 
minable desert, the wind moaning through the leafless branches 
of gigantic trees : vast solitude, and awful silence. No human 
being, bird, reptile, or beast was seen or heard. How long had 
that prodigious waste of water been tumbling, unknown to sci- 
ence and to admiration ? Had Esquimaux, or other Northmen, 
ever strayed around the marvellous cascade ? Had the mammoth 
or the mastodon drunk of the stream, or even the eagle perched 
on the crags? The Wyandot scarcely looked at it ; he had often 
been there before. To the squaw it was a new scene. But 
amazement is an emotion which barbarism and politeness coincide 
in never betraying : the same rule of action exists for the stupid 
and the elegant. The Indian lovers spread their bear skin on 
the snow, and slept undisturbed by wonder, cold, or any thought 
but of pursuit, which they assured each other was not to be appre- 
hended. Learning or luxury had not enlightened or unnerved 
them. After a short repose they set off again on their journey, 
keeping along the northern side of Lake Erie, with such constant 
swiftness, that before long they reached St. Clair, crossed the strait 
on the ice, were welcomed by the Potawattomies to their settle- 
ments, with whom the Wyandot had met on hunting excursions; 
and for several weeks the lovers did little else but sleep, the great 
enjoyment and chief occupation of savages after any exploit or 
excitement. 

As soon as the Seneca sachem ascertained the flight of his 
spouse, his determination was taken instantly. Vengeance is the 
first impulse of natural man, which law and religion partially 
restrain: and the worse the cause generally the stronger the 
thirst for vengeance. The Seneca knew that he had fairly lost 
his wife at the gamfng table ; that he refused either to pay the 
debt of honour to the Wyandot who won her, or fight him for the 
refusal. Conscious of wrong he was the more resentful. He 
found no difficulty in rousing the Seneca settlements to war, for 
an act of impressment which no nation should suffer; the intoler- 
able indignity of forcibly taking a woman away, and compelling 
her to serve strangers. The Senecas to a man rallied for the last 
resort of kings and injured people. The season was propitious; 

14* 



162 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

no fishing or planting to do, plenty of jerked meat in store. The 
warriors were tired of several moons dosing about wigwams, or 
exciting each other to exploits by recitals of achievements. They 
were unanimous, said Walk-in-the-\vater, a little sarcastically : 
there was no peace party, no opposition. No act of congress or 
declaration of war was necessary, no proclamation or manifesto ; 
not a word and a blow, but a whoop and a massacre. Yet every 
thing was done in order according to invariable formalities. In 
preliminaries of hostilities, European statesmen do but follow 
the methods of American savages. As soon as war was resolved 
upon in council, the war feast, or cabinet dinner followed as a 
matter of course ; at which the old were grave and dignified, 
the young gay and boastful. Then came the ball, or war dance. 
In every conceivable finery and foppery of dress, paint, feathers, 
beads, bracelets, and with highly ornamented weapons, the Sene- 
cas danced to music both vocal and instrumental — brandishing 
their arms, and howling with ecstacy. They jumped, squatted, 
threw their limbs into contortions, stamped, skipped, attitudi- 
nized in naked postures, far beyond the factitious graces of arti- 
ficial saltation or the measured steps of its voluptuous movements. 
Wellington challenged from the Duchess of Richmond's ball at 
Brussels by the French artillery, to the sabbath breaking field of 
Waterloo, went forth indeed to battle and to triumph from a 
dance. But an Indian never would have been surprised as he 
was, although to surprise enemies is their first art of war. The 
Seneca ball was an affair of state, as much as the cabinet dinner 
which preceded it, both deliberately arranged by authority. The 
cause of war, too, on these occasions was similar. All Europe 
joined in coalition to expel one man from France. Such was 
the argument of their protocols, the stipulation of their treaties, 
the rallying cry of their armies. The Senecas went to war 
against the Wyandots for a woman. Where is the difference? 
Whether a troublesome man, as he was denounced, or an un- 
chaste woman be the cause, how stand the moral and the con- 
science, the wisdom and the record of these two wars, two centu- 
ries and two continents apart ? How will history compare them ? 
How will justice decide ? As will be seen the Senecas never 
got the woman they waged war for, but their enemies triumphed. 
The allied great powers of Europe captured their man. They 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. 163 

took him to far distant imprisonment, chained him to a burning 
rock in the ocean, and tortured him to death. 

Next morning, after the war dance, the Senecas crossed the St. 
Lawrence on the ice, two hours before day surprised the Wyandot 
settlement asleep, and put numbers to cruel death. Children were 
spitted with darts and thrown in the fire. Women were roasted. 
Men were scalped, mutilated, emboweled, and otherwise tor- 
mented till they died. Slaughter was indiscriminate, and would 
have been exterminating but for the Indian fondness for pleasure. 
Victory is always their prelude to festivity, as with Europeans. 
No te deum indeed is sung, or other church ceremony performed. 
But a debauch is invariable. Suspending slaughter for this enjoy- 
ment, the Senecas rested awhile from that of massacre. The sur- 
viving Wyandots effected their escape with some hours start of 
their victors, who pursued them all the way to the strait of St. 
Clair, where they knew the fugitive lovers crossed. Meantime 
a thaw had taken place. As they passed Niagara, the ice was 
piled mountain high above the falls in tremendous overflow, a 
flood filled the channel like a deluge rushing over the precipice 
with fearful fury. The spray, foam, and roar of the cataract, the 
rushing rapids, the immense volume of water, and crash of float- 
ing timber— the whole scene might have arrested attention, and 
excited apprehension. There was then no horse-shoe or circular 
waterfall, but a straight plunge of the whole Niagara, from shore 
to shore. The Senecas hurried along almost without looking at 
it. When they got to where Sandwich now is, for the first time 
they came in sight of the flying Wyandots, whom the Senecas felt 
sure of taking and destroying, men, women and children. They 
shouted with savage delight and exultation. The Wyandots were 
dismayed. The ice had broke and was afloat on the strait, 
a rapid current, then violent, impetuous and irregular, swollen 
far above the common level, not boatable or bridged. No one 
could pass till the ice either sunk or fastened again, as it some- 
times would ; it was impracticable to get across. The jaded 
Wyandots had stopped on the bluff, dreading they might be over- 
taken there, for they had ascertained that they were pursued. — 
It was night ; an inconstant moon shone sometimes bright, then 
eclipsed by dark clouds. The snow was turned to sleet and mud, 
an element which they found as unmanageable as Napoleon did 
on his Polish campaign. The tawny females, almost every one 



164 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

with a child strapped at her back, looked haggard and pallid. — 
The children cried for hunger and restlessness. The men were 
despondent. It was about the last of February, as white men 
denominate that fitful month, 

So full of frost, and storms, and cloudiness. 

The French, abolishing religion and revolutionizing all things, 
flattered themselves that they were original in changing the 
Gregorian lunar names, when they only imitated the long esta- 
blished Indian calendar, by which the weather names months. 
In this predicament of February the Senecas overtook the Wyan- 
dots, paralyzed with panic at the sight of their dreadful pursuers, 
quadruple in numbers, centuple in spirit, unincumbered, thirsting 
for blood, whooping with anticipated surfeit of it. The Wyandot 
seducer, apprised by a runner that his whole country "was 
expelled and flying towards him, had joined them before they 
reached the strait. Some words of surrendering the Seneca's 
wife had murmured through the dejected multitude ; but that 
would have been an ignominious capitulation to which crime 
seldom submits. She was safe among the Potawattomies. As 
the Senecas advanced, they drew their bows to the arrow- 
head, and let fly a volley at the dismayed and confounded 
Wyandots, making no resistance. Surrender would be useless, 
because death was inevitable either way, and it was no worse to 
be slaughtered without than with that concession. Indeed, if 
prisoners, they would be tortured as well as killed; perhaps 
hanged, which, to Indians, is the worst form of death ; worse 
than to be tied to a tree, stuck full of burning splinters, eyes 
nose, and ears torn out, bowels ripped open. Stupefied by 
despair, unresisting, they were about to be sacrificed, when con- 
sternation revealed to the Wyandot lover a mode of salvation, 
an expedient for passing the angry strait, nearly a mile wide, of 
cold angry waters. Seizing a squaw, with her child in his arms, 
he leaped from the cliff down upon a cake of ice floating by, call- 
ing to the rest, " follow me and save yourselves." The dejected 
crowd of terrified fugitives were in no mood to disobey any 
command or contrivance for escape. They followed as sheep do 
a leading leap, and were instantly huddled together on various 
driving islands of ice crackling along. The Senecas reached the 
bluff, but disconcerted by this unlooked for evasion. They must 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. Jg5 

embark on the same frail reliance or lose the prey when almost 
clutched. The current drove the fugitives from the shore, sepa- 
rated in squads on disjointed cakes of ice, with sometimes large 
gaps of water between. There was a struggle between the effort 
of despair and the love of destruction— the former triumphed. 
The disconcerted Senecas paused on the bluff, thought of the 
risk, let fly a discharge of random arrows at the chase, hesitated 
a precious moment — and lost their prize. The crisis was over, the 
prey gone. The Wyandots, with gulfs of water between them 
and the shore, even hurled back a shout of success and almost 
defiance. Captain Barclay, wounded, vanquished, mortified, 
but not dismayed, when a prize-master entered the cabin of 
his ship, after her flag was struck, sturdily, sternly, rudely, and 
haughtily, like a bold Briton, rather in disdain than submission, 
said, " when I left the deck I would not have given sixpence for 
your chance." So the Senecas did not reckon the Wyandots' 
chance worth sixpence, when the fortune of war turned it all 
at once into priceless success. Standing on the bluff, they saw 
their prize escape, by perilous and marvellous transportation 
on floating portions of ice, and safely landed on the opposite 
shore, just as the moon broke forth from a cloud, and lit up the 
gloom of midnight. The Senecas could only turn to go home 
through the melting snows, and for several moons of respite from 
action, enjoy the recreation of slumber, telling their exploits, and 
brooding more. Trophies in large quantities, some booty, scalps 
hardly to be counted by their arithmetic, the comfort of consi- 
derable increase of landed possessions on the northern side of 
the river and lake, where the Wyandots dwelt, and meditation 
of further conquests, filled the Senecas' thoughts with as much 
as their minds required. For the war was only begun ; its 
direst calamity was to come. War begets war. Hostilities 
were not to be confined to the land. The waters were to have 
their share. All the inhabitants of regions so navigable as the 
lake country must be maritime people, whether red or white, 
savage or civilized. The Hurons, Potawattomies, Wyandots 
and other red nations of the lakes were naval powers, with 
fleets and sailors, well broke to battle and the breeze. The 
western flanks of the United States are already almost as nau- 
tical as the Atlantic shores. Fisheries, commerce in all its occa- 



166 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

sions, great opportunity of ports, every thing to develop nautical 
genius, exist there, always has, and always must. 

The Senecas were excellent watermen, and handled craft 
with great dexterity. They planned a naval expedition for the 
summer, from the eastern end of Lake Erie into Lake St. Clair, 
and to Lakes Huron, Michigan, or Superior, if necessary, to 
compel surrender of the Wyandot woman. Violation of any 
vow among people who make so few, is a greater offence than 
with refined nations, who make, write, print, publish, and record 
so many. Breach of the marriage vow is one of the greatest 
misdeeds of an Indian. The wife is a handmaid, a serving- 
woman : to deprive her lord of the society and service of such 
a helpmate is not only an insult, but unlawful injury, as by 
English common law. The cause of offence, woman, has at all 
times been the most exciting, enduring, and implacable of all 
causes. Long before Helen brought on that ten years' siege 
which produced a poem unequaled since, ante Helenam fuit 
teterrima causa belli; before Helen's day it was the direct 
cause of war. The Wyandots were not unapprized of the Se- 
necas' intention to attack them by water. They had envoys 
extraordinary, spies among the Senecas, with secret instructions 
to discover and report what could be learned. Forewarned, 
they resolved to be forearmed, and their hosts entered heartily 
into a league, offensive and defensive, with them. The Pota- 
wattomies, Ottoways, Chippeways, several of the peninsular 
nations, gave lands to, and shared subsistence with the Wyandot 
emigrants, making their cause their own. As hostilities during 
summer were to be translated from land to water, preparations 
were made accordingly, by refitting old boats, and building new. 
The Indians of the lakes were expert naval architects ; experi- 
enced in the construction of canoes of the build of the Roman 
galley, which still affords the finest models for vessels, whether 
for sail or steam, never surpassed, while continually tried to be 
by imaginary improvements in Dutch, French, English, and 
American naval architecture. Not only wood but stone, the 
hardest stone, the thickest plank, have been worked without 
iron in as great perfection as by modern masons, smiths, and 
carpenters, with that metal. Copper was the tool of some of 
the most accomplished ancient stone-cutters, artists, and archi- 
tects. Indians, too, have had their secrets of handicraft. 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. 167 

The Wyandot fleet was built on the upper lakes, Huron, Mi- 
chigan, as far off as Superior, as rapidly and scientifically, as the 
American or English fleets on Erie and Ontario. The Wyandot 
Indian material was the bark of the birch tree, which sheds its 
rind every year, remarkably light, tough, hard, and water-tight; 
hardly inferior to iron or gum Arabic for ship-building. Tho- 
roughly made of birch-bark, the Wyandot skiffs were patterns 
of workmanship, though we scarcely know by what tools so 
rapidly perfected by workmen without iron. Light, strong, 
buoyant, beautiful, they might be carried on the shoulders of 
men and floated in water with equal facility. The tawny tars of 
the lakes were amphibious animals, who walked, paddled, swam, 
with wonderful powers of performance. 

The rendezvous for the Wyandot fleet was between Lakes 
Huron and St. Clair, where Maiden is since built : and the time 
early in September. Sincerity and punctuality are ordinary 
savage virtues, as much as duplicity and procrastination when 
politic or expedient. Punctual to the appointed time and place 
the fleet came in, two hundred canoes strong, each manned by 
four men to paddle, with four more to fight, all under the com- 
mand of a warrior captain, invariably promoted for meritorious 
service, never by favour, intrigue or purchase. Rank among 
Indians is a hierarchy infallible through every grade, which 
family influence or personal solicitation cannot change, but desert 
alone arranges and maintains. Walk-in-the-water declared, em- 
phatically, that the traditional recollection or history of the fleet 
remains strong and clear among all the Indians of that peninsula ; 
for its armament and achievement caused great sensation at the 
time, formed in fact an era in Indian annals, which, being neither 
crowded with events nor confused by written narratives, are like 
the instincts of animals, few but indelible — sentiments or sensa- 
tions far more distinct and durable than common printed histori- 
cal transmission of transactions. The buffalo will find a salt lick 
with infinitely quicker and truer tact than a man of science in 
search of it. All beasts and birds in their migrations and their con- 
duct display knowledge of seasons, places, and may it not be said of 
astronomical indications, exceeding the best attainments of learn- 
ing. The Indians insist that Perry's battle was neither the first 
nor greatest on Lake Erie, but that the honour of a much greater 



168 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

belongs to them, preserved by tradition much truer than our 
typographical tales. 

It was an imposing spectacle, their fleet, as it rode at anchor 
or moored near Maiden ; a scene of nautical bustle and discipline, 
which warmed all hearts with ardour, if not admiration, as the 
birch canoes bravely rocked upon the waves, with their flags of 
feathers, combined by handicrafts of which the art, like many 
others of old, no longer exists, rabbit-skins, beaver-tails, fox-tails, 
with various other embellishments of a diversified peltry, deco- 
rating the canoes according to the taste of each crew or com- 
mander. Young squaws sighed for such husbands as manned 
the fleet, their heads profusely ornamented with feathers, their 
ears and noses with pendants, their arms with bracelets, their 
brawny bodies covered with hieroglyphic figures, otherwise 
slightly covered — some stark naked. The cabinet dinner and 
fashionable ball, and other established ceremonies were none 
omitted : on the contrary, attended with uncommon pomp and 
celebrated with universal favour. The war feast was held 
aboard the fleet. As women never are present on these occa- 
sions, but do the family duties of the kitchen, cook and bring the 
viands, and otherwise wait on their husbands and fathers, only 
men partook of this festival, which was conducted with strict 
regard to conventional and luxurious conviviality. Neither lying 
down at table like the ancients, or sitting up as the moderns do, 
the Indian convenience for that purpose is his breech-cloth as he 
squats to take food. Into their laps, squatting in the canoes, the 
squaws served squirrel soup in gourds, as the first course of the 
entertainment : then came white fish and other delicious fishes 
of the lakes. Venison, bears'-meat, and tortoise-meat, formed 
the next course. To that succeeded game in exquisite variety, 
such as no monarch can spread his table with ; wild ducks of all 
sorts, swans, wild turkies, pheasants, partridges, grouse and other 
fowl of the lakes, where they abounded in great quantity and per- 
fection. The liquors were of acknowledged excellence ; wine 
from persimmons, the black haw, elderberry, blackberry, dew- 
berry, strawberry, whortleberry : the latter said to be Washing- 
ton's favourite fruit ; with all other berries in season. Walnuts, 
hickory-nuts, shellbarks, filberts, hazelnuts, pumpkin pies, dressed 
with maple sugar, so as to make a delicious dish, composed the 
dessert. The feast elicited repartee, merriment, and great ani- 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. 169 

raation. The war-dance or ball succeeded the war feast or 
cabinet dinner. The Wyandots were superior dancers; an ex- 
ercise which in Indian performance consists in the utmost mus- 
cular exertion, accompanied by contortions almost convulsive, 
and regulated by a sort of plaintive vocal music. The modern 
Greeks dance in much the same way. Whoever has been at 
Athens since liberated Greece has been crowned by the holy 
alliance with a German king, may have seen, if ever present at 
an Indian war dance, the striking similarity in the dances of these 
two remote people, seeming to prove that natural dancing is 
unlike the artificial agility of that recreation, which so long ago 
as the last days of Roman republicanism, Sallust says, had be- 
come a meretricious amusement, and the vanity of courtezans, 
when Sempronia danced more elegantly than became a lady — 
salt are eleganlius quam necesse est probse, at one of Cataline's 
balls. The Wyandots, Potawattomies and Hurons were given to 
no such abuse of it. Their dancing, though excessively violent 
and forcible, was not indelicate, like modern opera dancing ; but 
seemed to have some of that solemnity, which not many years 
since characterized one of the most admired French dances, the 
minuet. In another striking particular Indian dancing — for they 
are exemplarily steady in their habits, free from capricious 
change — differs from the art, both ancient and modern. Indian 
women never dance, only permitted to look on, not to join the 
men. In France, chamber-men instead of chamber-maids make 
beds, and do other bed chamber work, shopmen in place of 
women tend shops ; while many menial offices of manhood in 
fields, mines and other pursuits of labour, are allotted to women. 
In some of these respects savage and civilized manners coincide, 
though in others entirely different. Dancing seems to be an art 
in which the Athenians and Indians agree, the prevailing prac- 
tice in most other countries differing essentially from both. 

Mean time the Senecas had not been idle. They, too, refitted 
old canoes, built new, practised the paddles and warriors in naval 
evolutions, and by midsummer had a stronger squadron than the 
coalition of the upper lakes, manned, equipped, and prepared for 
service. But the Senecas laboured under one fatal disadvantage. 
Their canoes were all built of live oak cut out of solid trees ; and 
ship timber was the standard in that war, as ship building, modi- 
fication of the same thing, was two hundred years after in that 
vol. i. — 15 



J 



170 INDIAN WARFARE. [1612. 

of 1812. The birch canoe was greatly the better craft for sailing, 
steering, and management altogether, whatever may now be 
thought of live oak. The Senecas were not ready quite as soon 
as the allies from St. Clair and Huron, who weighed their stone 
anchors, coiled the hide cables, or unmoored from their fasten- 
ings soon after the preliminaries before mentioned, and gallantly 
standing by Put-in-Bay, where the English and Americans lie 
buried together, coasted along the northern shore of Lake Erie 
till they came to off North Point, nearly opposite to the present 
town of Erie, where it was their admiral's opinion that they 
should stop, without doubling the Point, till they could send for- 
ward some light skiffs and reconnoitre. The Wyandot lover, 
always forward and active in every enterprize, volunteered to go 
in the first canoe. By singular coincidence of savage vigilance, 
the Senecas sent out a similar scout for like purpose about the 
same time. The two parties coming in distant view of each 
other, instantly put about and made the best of their way 
back to inform their respective fleets. The Wyandot lover alone 
remained. Before the Seneca squadron was out of sight he 
sprang into the water, and swam to the south shore, telling the 
captain of the canoe that he would return by land. The sur- 
rounding forests were then in all their aboriginal majesty and 
verdure. Mighty oaks, which stood on the margin of that lake 
long before Columbus or Vespucius, Cabot or Raleigh, crossed 
the Atlantic, with huge trunks sixty feet high before branching, 
hickories, chestnut, beech, tulip poplars and other magnificent 
growth of American forests, shaded the banks of the lake, and 
were reflected in its limpid waters. The Wyandot climbed the 
tallest of these towering trees, and from its top looked anxiously 
for the Seneca canoes, which he knew would be close in shore not 
far from the place of his reconnoissance near Buffalo. He had be- 
fore told the chieftains, with whom he was allied, that not far from 
the great waterfall the Senecas would rendezvous. The few 
canoes he had seen at a distance were so disguised, and so soon 
out of view that he was not certain of their build, and besides 
he wanted to learn the size of the whole Seneca fleet. He rocked 
with joy on the high branch he stood upon when he could 
plainly see that they were log built, clumsy craft, quite inferior 
to the birch skiffs of the Wyandots. With better prognostic than 
Napoleon saluted the English outposts before his rout at Water- 






CHAP. V.] INDIAN WARFARE. 171 

loo, smiling to his staff, and saying, aha ! — the English, I have got 
them at last — with as much confidence of success and better 
prognostic, the Wyandot instantly built castles of triumph in the 
air. The Seneca crews were at quarters practising a naval sham- 
fight, with bows and arrows, hatchets, battle-axes, and boarding 
pikes, all made of tough wood and sharp stone. Sweltering and 
grappling in a broiling sun they scuffled in counterfeit contest. 
The Wyandot was so intent on examining the manoeuvres, 
situation, force and equipments of the Seneca fleet, that he had 
not perceived, till assailed by a black eagle, that he was perched 
close by a young brood of that bird in a nest on another limb of 
his tree. Having ascertained all he wished to know, and not 
caring either to fight the eagle or excite the noise it was begin- 
ning to make, which might call attention to his hiding place, he de- 
scended, passed round the south side of the lake and Seneca fleet, 
at a sufficient distance to be out of danger, swam the Niagara river 
below the falls, and by rapid running, swimming Grand river 
and other smaller streams, he reached the combined fleet lying 
near North Point sometime before day, and imparted the cheering 
intelligence that the Senecas were in log canoes. It acted on the 
Wyandot chiefs like Major Wood's report to General Harrison 
before the battle of the Thames, that the English infantry were 
drawn up in open order. The order for action was given forthwith. 
By break of day the Wyandot fleet was under weigh, and soon 
after hove in sight of the Seneca fleet, anchored at Buffalo. The 
Wyandots then put in practice a preconcerted stratagem. Indian 
battles abound with stratagems, by which they seek to superadd 
some advantage to the efforts of courage. The signal for retreat 
was given from the Wyandot admiral's skiff, and repeated on 
conch shells from every division of the fleet; which put about 
hastily with seeming trepidation, paddling off to the middle of 
the lake, not very wide there. Immediately the Senecas cut 
their fastenings and gave chase with loud whoops of triumph. 
The Wyandots slackened paddling till their eager enemies over- 
took them : then veered about and with uproar began the com- 
bat, fought for several hours of close contest, boat to boat and 
hand to hand, running down, boarding, tomahawking, slaughter- 
ing each other in the noonday heat of a vertical sun, within 
sound of the roar of the Falls of Niagara. The action was closer 
than yard arm to yard arm : it was hand to hand. As all history, 



]72 INDIAN BATTLE. [1612. 

sacred and profane, attests, the destruction of combatants is much 
greater with weapons which bring them in corporeal collision 
than by fire arms, either musket, rifle, or cannon at a distance. No 
charge of cavalry or bayonets is so fatal and overwhelming as 
the homicidal effects of instruments which inflict death body to 
body : no battery of grape or canister so murderous. This 
memorable naval engagement proved it : for after a long and 
terrible struggle, in which the skiff canoes had the constant ad- 
vantage, every log canoe was captured, and every Seneca either 
killed or wounded, and made prisoner, save one. Going through 
the log canoes, after the battle, crimsoned with gore, and covered 
with the brains, entrails, and dislocated limbs of the dead or 
dying, as some of the captor chiefs were directed to do, one cow- 
ard Seneca — the only coward in the two fleets — was discovered. 
The dead were thrown overboard ; and all those badly wounded; 
but those not severely hurt were reserved to be tortured and 
burned. Going these rounds one Seneca was found in the bottom 
of a canoe, feigning death, that he might be thrown overboard 
as a corpse, when he hoped, to escape by swimming. Detected in 
his subterfuge, he was taken before the admiral, who had his 
nose and ears cut off, his teeth knocked out with a war-club, and 
in that condition put ashore to go home, and tell the tale of their 
disaster to the women, children and old men of the Seneca settle- 
ments. One hundred of the least severely wounded Senecas 
were taken ashore, together with all their canoes, by the Wyan- 
dots, for the ceremony of celebrating their victory in this memo- 
rable naval action, the first and most desperate ever fought on 
Lake Erie. One of Perry's acts of justice after his victory was 
to hang an American deserter, taken in the British fleet, much to 
Harrison's distress, who did not like severities. Wyandot mili- 
tary justice was as much more signal, as the size of the hostile 
fleets, number of combatants, severity of conflict, extent of 
destruction, and all other circumstances of the first exceeded 
those of the second naval engagement on that lake. With con- 
siderable labour the log canoes were carried to the upper side of 
the Falls of Niagara and there piled up in a large heap or 
funeral pyre. The hundred wounded Senecas, selected for the 
purpose, were tied and laid upon the top ; dry bits of hard wood, 
rubbed together, till the friction produced fire, applied to the 
pyre. The weather was hot, the canoes well-seasoned, their 



CHAP. V.] INDIAN TRIUMPH. 173 

wood dry : the flame soon mounted to where the wounded were 
laid, and most of them perished in a great blaze of glory, which 
disturbed numberless rattlesnakes reposing in the bushes, and 
myriads of musquitoes swarming in the air. The cataract at 
that time was broader, fuller and more direct in its descent than it 
has degenerated to become : it was also a quarter of a mile or 
more from where it now is ; the rapids tumbled with greater 
velocity ; the descent altogether of the fall exceeded half a mile; 
the volume of falling waters seven hundred thousand gallons a 
minute. The few wounded, who, as the fire burned off their 
shackles, attempted to escape, were shot down by arrows, pierced 
with darts, brained with clubs, or otherwise put to death, as the 
delighted Wyandots danced round the sacrifice. After all the 
victims were consumed, while the pyre continued to fling its 
blaze upon the neighbouring falls, the Wyandots concluded the 
celebration by a dance, such as before described, which was 
followed by a feast, not so profose of viands or carefully prepared 
as that which preceded the departure of the fleet from Maiden ; 
yet taken with all the relish of martial abandon. 

From that time to this, unappeasable alienation prevails be- 
tween the descendants of the Senecas, who are the six nations of 
New York, and those of the Wyandots. The Senecas, in the war 
of 1812, united with the Americans; while the Wyandots were 
among the steadiest adherents of the English. Some of them, 
said Walk-in-the-water, before their naval victory on Lake Erie, 
descended the Ohio and took refuge among the Creeks in the 
south. Others after that event, went north, and established them- 
selves among the Canewaghas of Canada. They are, as it was 
natural for Walk-in-the-water to assert, at the same time the 
most civilized and the most warlike of all the Indian nations. 
The only other Indian language like theirs is the Mohawk. 
Roman Catholic Wyandots pray and fight, with the Bible in one 
hand, and tomahawk in the other, under the patronage and pro- 
tection of Protestant Great Britain. Such, said Walk-in-the- 
water, closing his story, is their toleration and our civilization. 

15* 



YIQ PROCTOR'S FLIGHT. [SEPT., 1813. 

These untutored instruments of English profligacy turned from 
a great father over the sea to another at Washington, when they 
apprehended that the armies of the latter were the strongest. — 
Winnebagoes, Kickapoos, Hurons, and other braves of English 
reliance, deserted with the first reverse, while Tecumseh and 
apparently most of his numerous followers, remained faithful. — 
Proctor's fears were strange to the noble barbarian, who fell sword 
in hand when the English general ignominously fled. All the 
martial spirit Proctor had left, was the mere energy of despair, 
and that undone by avarice. The spies he had dispatched to the 
American camp, reported fifteen thousand men, when there were 
but seven. But long before they landed in Canada, as soon as 
the lake was lost, as early as the 17th of September, when Har- 
rison had not yet embarked, Proctor proclaimed martial law, in 
order that he might rob with impunity. Every one, and every 
place within his reach, was despoiled of every thing his disheart- 
ened myrmidons could lay their hands on, to be packed up and 
carried off. The torch was applied to all the rest. In the midst 
of this devastation, which terrified his army and their Indian de- 
pendents, and before the latter began to waver in their attach- 
ment, at a season of great plenty, when the harvests were abun- 
dant, the trees loaded with fruit, the waters swarmed with fish, 
the woods with game ; when fifteen thousand rations were issued 
every day by the English commissariat to the Indians ; when 
Proctor was strong in every thing but courage— in this scene of 
alarm, wanton power, and pusillanimous evasion, Tecumseh, 
proudly erect, and indomitable, appealed to the English general 
to stay and fight, not fly, like a coward and thief. " Father," said 
this sylvan hero to the despondent Briton, " listen to your red 
children. They are standing all around, ready to fight and die 
for you. Do not forsake, do not alarm them. In the old war 
your fathers deserted ours. Will you do it again ? You invited, 
encouraged, supplied us with arms, to war on the Americans. — 
When I first raised my tomahawk, you told me to wait awhile, 
to keep my braves in readiness till you were ready. Then you 
gave us rifles to recover the hunting grounds we had lost, and 
promised we should have them always. Ever since you desired 
it, we have fought by your side ; and when did we turn our 
backs to the foe ? At the Rapids, indeed, we did not strike hard, 
for we could not get at ground-hogs who took refuge in a hole. 



CHAP. VI.] TECUMSEH'S REMONSTRANCE. 177 

But at the Raisin, you know what we did. Listen to us, now, 
father ; you are instead of our great father over the sea. The 
ships went out to fight on the lake — you made them go out. — 
Where are they ? We do not know what happened ; we heard 
the great guns. They sounded loud and far, and since we have 
seen you tying up bundles to carry away; you told us always 
that you would never run away ; that the English never do. Will 
you now run before you have even seen the enemy ? If so, let us 
have food and arms. Do not take every thing from us. We 
will stay and fight. We are not afraid. We do not like to run, at 
any rate till we have fought and find our enemies the strongest. 
We have never been beat on land ; but we do not know what has 
happened on the water. My brother, the prophet, is among the 
Creeks. They are doing what you directed when I visited them. 
The war is prosperous. Our lives are in the keeping of the Great 
Spirit. You have plenty of arms and ammunition. Leave 
them with us, if you must go. We are resolved to fight, and 
leave our bones on the lands that belong to us, if so the Great 
Spirit wills. We cannot run away like dogs with tails down, 
till now proudly curled over our backs in defiance." 

Tecumseh's speech was as ineffectual to stop Proctor's flight 
as Chatham's had been to deter the employment of savage aux- 
iliaries. So panic-struck, and precipitate was the English retreat, 
loaded with plunder, that they did not stop even to destroy the 
bridges to impede pursuit; but hurried off in the utmost con- 
fusion — ignoble Englishmen, forgetful 

That Chatham's language was their native tongue, 
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with their own. 

General Harrison almost desponded of overtaking the fugi- 
tives. On the 27th September, 1813, he wrote to the secretary 
of war, that he would pursue them next day, but that there was no 
probability of overtaking them. But the Kentuckians were 
resolved on the revenge of, at any rate, a battle with their mur- 
derers at Raisin. Old Governor Shelby, in his sixty-third year, 
mounted on the only horse to be found, ardent as when he 
scaled the steeps of King's Mountain thirty years before, William 
Barry and Charles Wickliffe, both subseqently Postmasters-Gene- 
ral of the United States, John Crittenden, now the eloquent and 
popular senator from Kentucky, with many more, were deter- 



178 PURSUIT OF PROCTOR. [OCT., 1813. 

mined that Proctor should not escape. They were not to be 
disappointed by any irresolution or deterred by any obstacle. 
Harrison, therefore, with Commodore Perry, General Cass, Ge- 
neral Green Clay, and an army eager for action, pushed forward 
without delay or hesitation, by forced marches, over rivers, 
morasses, through broken countries, attended by some boats 
and water craft; continually finding Proctor's stores, provisions, 
ammunition, and arms, either deserted by the way, or so weakly 
guarded, by small detachments of the enemy, as to offer no 
resistance. Seldom was flight more mismanaged than that of 
the English. Long before overtaken, they had given up. The 
whole way from Maiden to the Thames, betrayed their extreme 
perturbation. Even the dispatches and documents, which, after- 
wards published in all our newspapers, betrayed their connec- 
tion at once despicable and detestable, with the Indians — even 
these were suffered to fall into the hands of their pursuers. In- 
stead of fighting where they were well entrenched, fortified, 
and provided, they were forced to encounter an attack under 
many disadvantages of their own making, and no raw militia 
were ever cowed more disgracefully than these British regulars, 
from the moment they abandoned Maiden, to their throwing 
down their arms and begging for mercy on the Thames. At 
length, on the morning of the 5th October, 1S13, near an Indian 
settlement called the Moravian towns, on the river Thames, Har- 
rison came up with the English, S00 regular troops under Major 
General Proctor, and 1200 Indians headed by Tecumseh. By 
this time, Colonel Johnson's regiment of 1200 mounted men, 
armed with guns, without either pistols or sabres, had joined 
General Harrison, having, by forced marches, followed from the 
moment they got his orders to do so. The particulars of their 
march are given in Mr. McAfee's volume, who commanded one 
of the troops, with great fidelity and vivid description. The regi- 
ment was commanded by the member of Congress, Richard M. 
Johnson, who will take no umbrage at its being stated that his 
brother James, the lieutenant-colonel of that fine regiment, was 
a man, not of more courage, for that could hardly be, but of 
more talent than the gallant colonel himself, remarkable for the 
good qualities which distinguish a numerous family of western 
chivalry. 

Armstrong, always sarcastic and contemptuous towards Har- 



CHAP. VI.] SHELBY. 179 

rison, says, in his Notices of the War, that if his despondency 
of overtaking Proctor had continued a little longer than it did, 
it would have verified its own reality. He acknowledges, 
nevertheless, that his dispositions for the attack were promptly, 
coolly and gallantly made, against Proctor, skilfully posted, but 
without the defences which a calmer mind would have pro- 
vided for his protection. Conspicuous, keen for combat, and 
heroic, were the veteran Shelby and the two Johnsons. John- 
son's regiment was at Camp Meigs the 25th September, when 
he received General Harrison's orders to follow him into Canada, 
which were obeyed forthwith, taking along some artillery. On 
their rapid march, they discovered, at the Raisin, the bones of 
the victims of the massacre, which they had piously collected 
and committed to the earth in June, disinterred as they had been 
by the savages, and lying scattered about the fields, by the time 
of Johnson's arrival there, entirely deserted. Another express 
from Harrison reached them while contemplating that abomina- 
ble scene ; inflamed by which they hastened in pursuit of its per- 
petrators, and by the 2d of October they were with General Har- 
rison when he moved after Proctor. As our army approached 
his, in the first skirmishes the mounted regiment was engaged, 
and lost a few men killed and wounded. Governor Shelby, in 
1780, commanded a North Carolina regiment at the battle of 
King's Mountain, in South Carolina. At that time the last and 
worst strife of the Revolution was aggravated by civil, almost 
servile, war. Major Ferguson, a British officer of uncommon 
enterprize and energy, had incorporated a number of resolute 
American tories with his regiment, entrenched on the top of a 
lofty hill called King's Mountain. They were attacked and 
totally defeated in that stronghold, by a body of militia, setting 
at naught all the principles of strategy, but animated by the 
utmost ardour of courage. They had no commander. Each 
one of several colonels commanded a day in rotation. They were 
beholden to no government, under no orders, supplied with no 
arms except their own, mostly rifles ; had no artillery, no stores, 
no food but venison caught in the woods, no salt, no drink but 
the water of running streams, no bread but some cake made of 
Indian corn or pumpkins, no tents, blankets, or tools of any 
kind. They were a pure and perfect military democracy. On 
the 7th October, 1780, nearly the anniversary of the battle of 



ISO KING'S MOUNTAIN. [OCT., 17S0. 

the Thames, thirty-three years before, Governor Shelby learned 
his soldiership in that admirable lesson to punctilious generals, 
of what may be done by a good spirit, without other discipline 
or materials. On the top of King's Mountain, Shelby helped 
to plant seeds of a republic, since spread from the frozen St. 
Johns to the fervid plains of St. Jacinto, and destined, by similar 
spontaneous accomplishment, to much further extension. Of 
the three colonels elected to attack the English entrenched on 
King's Mountain, the one chosen for command that day, told his 
men as they mounted to the assault, not to wait for the word of 
command, but to follow his lead. " Every man," said he, "must 
think himself an officer and act on his own best judgment ; stand 
as long, and fire as fast as he can ; never run away entirely, 
but, if forced to retreat, get behind a tree. Finally, my friends," 
said this commander, " if any of you are afraid, he can with- 
draw before the action begins." With this exhortation and 
discipline every man mounted to the assault, and, after a long 
and bloody action, killed or captured all their several hundred 
enemies. These rude mountaineers celebrated their victory by 
hanging ten of the captured tories. Such was Governor Shelby's 
apprenticeship to arms, in which, perhaps, was to be seen some 
of the peculiar American spirit of wild enterprize and contempt 
of death, which, in spite of all the Old World may do, say, or 
think, will carry the adventurous pioneers of the New, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. 

The night before the battle of the Thames, Walk-in-the-water, 
with sixty followers, deserted Proctor, and threw themselves into 
General Harrison's arms. Large quantities of English stores fell 
into our possession continually. Late at night Proctor and Te- 
cumseh descended the river clandestinely, and made a reconnois- 
sance, with a view to attack Harrison, which was Tecumseh's 
desire, and probably, Proctor's best plan for escape : but the En- 
glish general did not choose to risk t what would have been not 
only less dishonourable, but much safer, than the battle he was 
forced to accept. 

When all General Harrison's dispositions for attack, on the 5th 
of October, 1813, had been made, and the army was advancing 
against the enemy, well posted among woods, marshes and 
streams, Colonel Wood, who had approached close to the English 
— concealed to reconnoitre — returned to General Harrison, and 



CHAP. VI.] BATTLE OF THE THAMES. Jgj 

told him that Proctor's men were drawn up in open lines; that is, 
each man somewhat separated from the next, instead of standing 
close together, as is the strongest and safest method. With con- 
siderable felicity of prompt adaptation to circumstances, Harrison 
instantly changed his order of attack. He inquired of Colonel 
Johnson, if his horsemen could charge infantry. Certainly, said 
the colonel. His men had been trained and practised to charge 
in the woods, just as they were to do. General Harrison then 
gave Colonel Johnson the order to charge ; and in an instant that 
battalion of the mounted regiment, which Colonel Richard John- 
son committed to his brother, the Lieutenant Colonel, James, 
charged through and through the English infantry, who then threw 
down their arms, and cried for quarters in a much more craven 
mood than had yet been betrayed in that war. Their commander, 
after demoralizing them by guilt, and encumbering them with 
plunder, disheartened them by pusillanimous misbehaviour when 
attacked. Colonel Richard Johnson's order to charge was dis- 
cretionary ; to charge the enemy as they stood, infantry, artillery, 
and some horse. Finding that the whole of his regiment could 
hardly get at them between the river and the swamp where they 
were drawn up, while, by passing the swamp, he might reach 
the Indians there awaiting our onset, Colonel Johnson, in the 
absence of General Harrison, exercised a judicious discretion to 
consign the first battalion of his regiment to his brother for the 
English, while he himself, with the other battalion, should attack 
the Indians. The English infantry delivered some shots as Lieu- 
tenant Colonel James Johnson approached, and for a moment dis- 
concerted some of the first horses, although drilled to that mode of 
charge. But, taking a couple of volleys as they advanced, they 
easily recovered composure, rushed on the infantry, pierced, broke, 
then wheeled upon them, poured in a destructive fire on their 
rear, and brought them to instantaneous submission, without much 
loss on either side. Quarter was at once given by the much 
abused Kentuckians, as soon as asked for by their calumniators, 
and assassins of their companions. Proctor, with a small escort 
of dragoons and mounted Indians, made his escape so quickly and 
rapidly, that no effort could overtake him. He was pursued for 
many miles, abandoned his carriage and sword, lost all his plunder 
and papers, betraying the brutal levity with which English officers 
entertained each other, of their habitual reliance on savage bar- 
vol. i. — 16 



182 TECUMSEH. [OCT., 1813. 

barities, and found his way, at last, through many tribulations, to 
Burlington heights, there to be publicly reprimanded and dis- 
graced for cowardice and avarice, by the Governor General of 
Canada. The disaster of the British army, said an English his- 
torian, was not palliated by those precautions, and that presence 
of mind, which even in defeat reflects lustre on a commander. — 
The bridges and roads in the rear of the retreating army, were 
left entire, while its progress was retarded by a useless and cum- 
bersome load of baggage. The defeat led to the harshest recrimi- 
nations, and involved the division of brave troops serving with 
honour in Michigan Territory, in unmerited disgrace. To this 
historical reproach of Proctor, we will perceive what his com- 
mander-in-chief superadded of obloquy. Thonsandsof hard fought 
fields in every quarter, and with every people of the world, by 
land and sea, attest the stubborn valour of British troops. No 
history can deny their characteristic courage and fortitude. But 
English murderers and thieves became cowards in Canada: hard 
words, but true. To save themselves from retaliation, and their 
ill-got plunder from recapture, they laid down their arms to an 
inferior force of raw troops, while their commander fled in the 
first moment of encounter. 

Tecumseh, with his red braves, made a very different stand 
against Colonel Richard Johnson. Unlike the precipitate firing 
of the British infantry, these gallant savages reserved theirs till 
close pressed, then delivered volleys with deadly aim and effect. 
Embarrassed by the swamp, Colonel Johnson found it necessary 
to dismount his men. As soon as Governor Shelby heard the 
musketry from his station, the old soldier, eager for action, led up 
his men. After some time of close, sharp, and mutually de- 
structive fighting, the Indians were forced to give way. But not 
without sacrificing three times as many lives as the English, and 
leaving infinitely fewer prisoners as trophies to their conquerors. 
Active and conspicuous, invincible and exemplary, the valiant 
Tecumseh fought till he fell pierced with several balls, and died 
a hero's death. The Indian chief, on whom the savage com- 
mand devolved, deplored to General Harrison, after the battle, 
the treacherous cowardice of their father, General Proctor, by 
which term of veneration, he still mentioned that recreant supe- 
rior. Such were the Kentucky recollections of the massacre 
at the river Raisin, and the animosity it occasioned against Te- 



CHAP. VI.] RICHARD M. JOHNSON. 183 

cumseh, by no means the guiltiest of its perpetrators, when his 
body was discovered, after the battle of the Thames, known as 
he was to General Harrison, and recognized from other Indians 
among the slain, by pock marks, and a leg once broken and set, 
that pieces of his skin were cut off by some of the Kentucky sol- 
diers, to be kept by them. Indignities to the dead are common 
on every field of battle. Refined military men, who might con- 
demn these Kentucky spoils as barbarous mementos, would sack 
cities, during days of authorized horrors and licentiousness, which 
prove that war is a ferocious departure at best from the laws of 
humanity. 

Colonel Richard Johnson's task in conflict with Tecumseh, 
was much longer, bloodier and more difficult, though no bolder, 
than his brother's vanquishing the English. Whether with his 
own hand he killed the Indian chieftain, is among the disputed 
occurrences of a conflict, in which his conduct requires no addi- 
tional celebrity. He was repeatedly shot, and desperately 
wounded; disabled for some time, from resuming his seat in 
Congress, and then upon crutches, which he was obliged to use 
for several years. He served in that body for many years, in 
both Houses, during the presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, Mon- 
roe, John Quincy Adams, and Jackson ; always as remarkable 
for his facility to be overcome by an applicant, as impenetrable 
resistance to an enemy. No man ever had greater difficulty in 
saying no, than Colonel Johnson, whose name is recorded to as 
many affirmative votes, as Mr. Macon's is to negatives. 

The battle of the Thames was our first regular and considerable 
victory. I have not at! empted to describe its professional, or indeed 
particular, features ; that having been done by so many others. 
Truth, always difficult of attainment, is hardly a rudiment of nar- 
ration when involving personal animosities and vanities, exacer- 
bated by national prejudices. In fact, no one person witnesses 
much of most battles, but must be content with various reports 
from others. Hence the English proverb that falsehood glares 
on every French bulletin. But what shall Americans say of 
English official accounts of our conflicts in arms ? Even journals 
of legislative bodies, records of courts of justice, which in their 
theory import absolute and unquestionable verity, are not only 
imperfect, but often deceptive reports of what really occurs. The 
morals and lessons of the war of 1812 should be exhibited and 



184 PROCTOR DISGRACED. [NOV., 1S13. 

explained ; while much of detail must remain controverted, or 
unknown. The result of the north-western campaign was to re- 
lieve great regions from English power and Indian devastation. 
The moral of it is best told by the sentence Sir George Prevost 
inflicted on General Proctor, which I think proper, as the best 
evidence, to incorporate at large with this narrative. 

Head-Quarters, Montreal, 
November 24, 1813. 

His excellency, the commander of the forces, has received an 
official report from Major-General Proctor, of the affair which 
took place on the 5th October, near the" Moravian village, and he 
has in vain sought in it for grounds to palliate the report made to 
his excellency by Staff-Adjutant Beiffenstein, upon which the 
general order of the 18th October was founded — on the contrary, 
that the statement remains confirmed in all the principal events 
which marked that disgraceful day ; the precipitancy with which 
the Staff-Adjutant retreated from the field of action, prevented 
his ascertaining the loss sustained by the division on that occa- 
sion ; it also led him most grossly to exaggerate the enemy's 
force, and to misrepresent the conduct of the Indian warriors, 
who, instead of retreating towards Machedash, as he had stated, 
gallantly maintained the conflict, under their brave chief Tecum- 
seh, and in their turn harassed the American army on its retreat 
to Detroit. 

The subjoined return states the loss the right division has sus- 
tained in the action of the fleet on Lake Erie, on the 10th Sep- 
tember, and in the affair of the 5th October, near the Moravian 
village ; in the latter, but very few appear to have been reserved, 
by an honourable death, from the ignominy of passing under the 
American yoke, nor are there many whose wounds plead in 
mitigation of this reproach. The right division appears to have 
been encumbered with an unmanageable load of private bag- 
gage — while the requisite arrangements for the expeditious and 
certain conveyance of the ammunition and provisions, the sole 
objects worthy of consideration, appear to have been totally 
neglected, as well as all those ordinary measures resorted to by 
officers of intelligence, to retard and impede the advance of a 
pursuing enemy. The result affords but too fatal a proof of 
this unjustifiable neglect. The right division had quitted Sand- 



CHAP. VI.] PROCTOR'S DISGRACE. Ig5 

wich on its retreat, on the 28th September, having had ample 
time, for every previous arrangement to facilitate and secure that 
movement; on the 2d of October following, the enemy pursued 
by the same route, and on the 4th, succeeded in capturing all the 
stores of the division, and on the following attacked and defeated 
it, almost without a struggle. 

With heartfelt pride and satisfaction, the commander of the 
forces had lavished on the right division of his army, that tribute 
of praise which was so justly due to its former gallantry and 
steady discipline. It is with poignant grief and mortification, 
that he now beholds its well-earned laurels tarnished, and its 
conduct calling loudly for reproach and censure. 

The commander of the forces appeals to the genuine feelings 
of the British soldier, from whom he neither conceals the extent 
of the loss the army has suffered, nor the far more to be lamented 
injury it has sustained in its wounded honour, confident that but 
one sentiment will animate every breast, and that zealous to wash 
out the stain which by a most extraordinary and unaccountable 
infatuation has fallen on a formerly deserving portion of the 
army ; all will vie to emulate the glorious achievements recently 
performed by a small but highly-spirited and well-disciplined 
division, led by officers possessed of enterprize, intelligence and 
gallantry, nobly evincing what British soldiers can perform, when 
susceptible of no fear, but that of failing in the discharge of their 
duty. 

E. BAYDES, Adjutant-General. 

The last act of General Harrison's military service was a just 
rebuke to Generals Proctor and Vincent, for the inhuman bar- 
barities and despicable thefts perpetrated by suborned Indians 
and British officers. Immediately after the battle of the Thames, 
Proctor sent a flag of truce to Harrison, audaciously requesting 
the restoration of the private property and papers captured from 
the English. Reserving his answer till he reached Buffalo, and 
then making it to General Vincent who commanded there, the 
American commander proudly referred the English to the report 
of his own officers for their treatment as prisoners, and the re- 
spect shown to their papers and property by their captors. Of 
the American prisoners, who fell into Proctor's hands, those who 
escaped the tomahawk, General Harrison justly added, had suf- 

16* 



186 ENGLISH BARBARITIES. [OCT., 1813. 

fered all the indignities and deprivations human nature could 
endure. In not a single instance was the private property of officers 
respected. After enumerating many instances in which whole 
families of men, women and children, were inhumanly butchered 
by savages coming directly from and returning to the British 
camp, General Harrison solemnly threatened the retaliation due 
to such outrages, should any more be committed. Other com- 
manders, like Jackson, in Florida, in 1816, would have executed 
the threat : for retaliation is a just and indispensable principle of 
modern mitigated warfare, sometimes as necessary as the execu- 
tion of criminals condemned after trial by civil tribunals in pro- 
found peace. General Vincent's acknowledgment of this letter 
from Harrison, pleaded duty to his king and country, in justifica- 
tion of what no authority can command or justify. Chatham's 
fierce invective against employment of the savages would not 
endure from age to age as a model of noble eloquence, were 
there not a broad basis of reason and law for its support. Such 
employment of unwarranted and unmanly means of warfare is 
contrary, he argues, to the law of nature, to the law of nations, 
and mischievous to military discipline; extremely detrimental, 
therefore, to those who use, and unjust to those who suffer it. It 
is, he adds, an enormity calling aloud for redress and punishment ; 
a stain on national character; violation of the constitution; 
against law ; impairing the strength and character of our own 
army, infecting it with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapine, 
familiarizing with cruelty the generous principles which should 
dignify a soldier. God and nature put no such means in men's 
hands ; shocking to every lover of honourable war. In vain has 
the Protestant religion been established, if these more than inqui- 
sitional cruelties are permitted. Excluding from this celebrated 
burst of indignant denunciation the declamatory and poetical 
embellishment, distilled to mere argument, the doctrine is un- 
questionable as law and authority. And it is due, not only to 
history, or the past, but to the future, as a rule of action, to the 
present and at all times, to explain as we'll as record the injunction. 
War has its regulations. In some respects, Montesquieu says, 
the Deity may be said to go by rule. To poison wells, slaughter 
prisoners, burn churches, spoliate private property, mutilate, 
torture or violate persons, are contrary to recognized laws of war. 
Publicists of repute, such as Wolff and Bywrkershoech, have 



CHAP. VI.] ENGLISH BARBARITIES. 137 

asserted that war legalizes any violence ; that fraud and poison 
may be employed against enemies ; prisoners killed without 
necessity; that warriors may do as they will. But enlightened 
civilization repudiates these errors. Since Grotius, Vattel, and 
other standard authorities have treated the subject, a plain prin- 
ciple is universally acknowledged that only so much force is 
lawful as is necessary to accomplish the end of war, which end 
is peace. British officers cannot plead the orders of their superiors 
for employing instruments of war whose bloody barbarism is 
indiscriminate destruction, tortures, fire-brands, scalping knives, 
and other unnecessary wanton means. Both the government 
authorizing and officers exercising such cruelties are liable to 
retaliation, a principle of hostilities of universal use and acknow- 
ledgment. When savages are employed, there is a perfect right 
not only to punish them as murderers, but to retaliate on those 
who employ, abet and instigate them. 

If, in the order of Providence, there is national punishment 
for offence, long arrears of atonement are due for the forcible 
and fraudulent extrusion of the aboriginal red occupants of the 
American soil, descendants, perhaps, of the Northmen of Eu- 
rope, or the elder nations of Asia, with ancestral titles more 
remote than even their European conquerors. The people of 
the independent United States had hardly an option in this cruel 
policy, which, like negro slaves, was part of their inheritance 
from British colonization. The evil has long been past remedy. 
For most of two centuries we have attacked, overreached, 
provoked, wasted, destroyed, or driven away these unhappy 
tribes. In almost every instance, white men were the aggres- 
sors; till intractable animosity became the universal sentiment 
of the white and red, white and black races, and negro slavery 
and Indian oppression are too deep-seated for political remedy. 
Kindness to the slave and to the savage is all that can be done. 
Colonial and belligerent action and reaction have left nothing 
else practicable. The government of the United States has 
never been wanting in this duty to the savages. The London 
Gazette, during the war of 1812, furnished frequent testimonials 
of constant English endeavour to prevent our engaging the 
Indians to be neutral, or, if taking part in hostilities, to be 
humane. In that of the 13th November, 1813, the colonial 
secretary, Earl Bathurst, published the Governor-General Pre- 



188 ENGLISH BARBARITIES. [OCT., 1813. 

vost's letter, of the 25th August, reciting General Proctor's 
letter of the 23d of that month, congratulating England, that 
General Harrison's efforts and missions to the Indians to prevail 
on them to abstain from their cruel practices had failed. " His 
majesty's allies," said this dispatch, " will adhere to their great 
father in England." About the same time, our government 
was more successful with the Mohawks and other of the six 
nations, in July, 1813, engaged, by treaty, to make war against 
the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, but under expcess 
stipulation that their customary inhumanity should not be per- 
mitted. Accordingly, when a party of militia under Major Cha- 
pin, with a body of these Indians, routed an English force near 
Fort George, it was arranged, before fighting, that there should 
be no scalping, killing prisoners, or other cruelty, and several 
wounded prisoners were protected from harm. At least some 
such mitigation of their barbarous modes of warfare would have 
been established had not the terror of those very modes been 
one of Great Britain's strongest means for waging war. An act 
of Congress, of March, 1845, bestows more than a million of 
dollars in annuities and supplies to more than fifty once fierce 
and formidable nations of Indians, now miserable, banished 
fragments of brave and noble races almost extinct. 

Consanguinity, colonial reverence, innumerable sympathies, 
and national identities should endear Great Britain to this coun- 
try, and recommend her power in all its resplendent glory. 
Instead of which, what alienation and animosity have been 
engendered by selfish, cruel, and wanton conflict ! We owe them 
love of liberty, and its enjoyments ; nor should be ungrateful for 
such creative genius and numberless inestimable blessings. Yet 
two wars already, tell the estrangement of kindred but rival 
nations ; for which the cheapest and best American preparation 
has been that spirit of hostility kept up among a martial people 
by continual malediction, aggression, and injustice ; never sus- 
pended even in peace. National alienation is in the order of 
Providence, without which, and confusion of tongues, there 
would be no distinct nations. But must England, like Rome, 
consider all mankind barbarians but themselves ? With two 
millions of subjects in North America, Great Britain has never 
ceased to encroach on the eighteen millions of her kindred, 
anxious to live in peace on this continent. To execute as trai- 



CHAP. VI.] HARRISON'S RETIREMENT. \^Q 

tors, those born in England and emigrating to America with no 
hostile or treacherous intent, but in pursuit of tranquil happiness, 
to impress seamen from American vessels, to destroy American 
commerce for interfering with English warfare, to excite the 
poor but ruthless savage to cruel hostilities, to arm the slaves 
England left here to dreadful revolt ;— these are extreme acts of 
wrong, of which posterity can have but one opinion, and history 
will tell but one tale, whenever, in the course of things, the 
might and majesty of British dominion pass away. 

Soon after the victories by water and land which freed the 
whole western frontier, and, together with General Jackson's 
successes in the south-west, broke down the Indian power every- 
where — its most active instigator and able chieftain, Tecumseh, 
one of the many victims to British alliance and subornation, 
sacrificed — the brave Kentuckians, honourably discharged, were 
led home by their gallant leader, the venerable Governor Shelby, 
triumphant in 1813 as he was in 1783 over the arms of Great 
Britain. General Harrison, with most of the regular troops 
under his command, embarked on the lakes for Buffalo, where 
he landed with General M'Arthur's brigade, on the 24th Octo- 
ber, 1813. Without having been actively employed anywhere 
on Lake Ontario, he left the north-west in the latter part of the 
autumn and pursued his progress homewards, feted at New 
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, for his campaign 
victoriously concluded. Soon after, while reposing on his laurels 
at home, in Ohio, his military life was put an end to by the re- 
signation of his commission, which, probably, he did not wish 
to part with. The military districts into which the United States 
were divided were necessarily very extensive. We have already 
seen that there was a project in the west, urged by Governor 
Shelby, and favoured by General Harrison, for establishing there 
a board of war. The president, however, thought that all the 
various channels of public communication centering at the seat 
of government, much more accurate knowledge of affairs could 
always be had there than by any commander of a military 
district, at whatever station he might happen to be. It was 
deemed essential that the war department should be able always 
to issue instantaneous commands, to every post, quarter, and 
officer, without delaying them to pass through the hands of the 
commander of that military district. The practice, therefore, 



190 GENERAL HARRISON. [DEC, 1813. 

was established of transmitting them wherever the executive 
thought proper, accompanying thern with mere duplicates to the 
commander of the district. In this way Colonel Croghan was 
charged with his unsuccessful expedition against Mackinaw, in 
the autumn of 1812, which I have not thought it necessary to 
dwell upon, as it produced no result to the hostilities on either 
side. Other such orders sent into General Harrison's district, he 
protested against so vehemently that it became the subject of 
correspondence and executive consideration. The president 
finally made known to General Harrison his determination to 
persevere in a system which the general denounced as inconsist- 
ent with subordination, and, thereupon, tendered his resignation. 
As his reputation and influence at the time were imposing, he 
perhaps flattered himself that he would have been requested to 
keep his commission, and that some satisfactory arrangement 
would have ensued between him and the president. Mr. 
Madison not being at Washington when the tender of Gene- 
ral Harrison's resignation arrived there, the Secretary of War, 
General Armstrong, who did not esteem General Harrison, and 
had the president's authority to persevere in the obnoxious sys- 
tem of orders, instantly accepted General Harrison's resignation, 
and suggested General Jackson to supply the vacancy. Thus 
closed the military career of William Henry Harrison ; who 
afterwards served as a member of both Houses of Congress, on 
a foreign mission to Colombia, in South America, which he soli- 
cited, was elevated from the clerkship of a court in Cincinnati to 
the presidency, and after one short month of treacherous triumph 
in that office, crowned his good fortune by premature death in 
the presidential mansion. The house was thronged with people, 
even the chamber in which he died, not free from idle intrusion. 
He expired with incoherent words of patriotism on his lips, 
before difficulties and distractions, to which his administration 
was inevitably destined, leaving the world with most men of all 
parties inclined to think well of his character, to magnify his 
virtues, extenuate his foibles, regret his death, and celebrate his 
memory. 

At Mrs. Madison's drawing-room, in the same mansion in 
which he died, in the end of the year 1813, on his triumphant 
return, going homeward from the north-western frontier, he was 
a gay, jocular, and pleasant man, vain of his success. A hand- 



CHAP. VI.] ILLUMINATION. 191 

some and highly connected lady still living, told the president 
that General Harrison had received her commands to meet her 
at that drawing-room. Bat that he cannot do, said Mr. Madi- 
son, because he left Washington this morning, with his horses 
and attendants, all at the door of this house, and must be now 
some twenty or thirty miles on his way to the west. "Still," 
replied the lady, archly, " he must be here, for I laid my com- 
mand upon him, and he is too gallant a man to disobey me." 
The president rejoined with his manner of gentle, but positive 
assurance, " we shall soon see whose orders he obeys." The 
question was presently settled by the general's appearance, with 
his military attendants in full costume, the lady smiling at her 
triumph over the most successful American general of tliat day, 
and the President of the United States. Steamboats were just 
beginning, rail-roads unknown, stage coaches extremely incon- 
venient, national, and even turnpike roads very rare at that 
time, when most journeys, particularly to the west, were per- 
formed in the saddle. The daughter of one of the Ohio senators 
accompanied her father five hundred miles from Chilicothe to 
Washington on horseback. The wife of another senator not 
only rode fifteen hundred miles on horseback, but passed through 
several Indian settlements for many nights without a house to 
lodge in. It may be added that her husband's colleague in the 
senate was born in Paris, and bred to the church in France. 

Perry's and Harrison's victories gave us our first public re- 
joicings for a victory by a fleet, and a victory by an army. For 
the first time Philadelphia was illuminated by authority, in Octo- 
ber 1813, when the city councils contained majorities of the war 
party. Without that preponderance, probably, there would have 
been no such show, as English attachments still then prevailed 
to so great a degree, that there were persons who declared they 
illuminated not for American victories, but those of the allies of 
England over Bonaparte. A boat on fire was dragged through 
the streets that night hy lads, who stopped before the dark man- 
sion of a gentleman who refused to put any light in his windows. 
The mayor of the city, John Barker, addressed them in his happy 
strain of popular oratory, to prevent violence to the house which 
dared to be dark on such an occasion. Wild law, as Locke calls 
it, lynch law, as termed in the United States, is often provoked, 
though it may not be justified, by some inconsiderate defiance, 



190 GENERAL HARRISON. [DEC, 1813. 

was established of transmitting them wherever the executive 
thought proper, accompanying them with mere duplicates to the 
commander of the district. In this way Colonel Croghan was 
charged with his unsuccessful expedition against Mackinaw, in 
the autumn of 1812, which I have not thought it necessary to 
dwell upon, as it produced no result to the hostilities on either 
side. Other such orders sent into General Harrison's district, he 
protested against so vehemently that it became the subject of 
correspondence and executive consideration. The president 
finally made known to General Harrison his determination to 
persevere in a system which the general denounced as inconsist- 
ent with subordination, and, thereupon, tendered his resignation. 
As his reputation and influence at the time were imposing, he 
perhaps flattered himself that he would have been requested to 
keep his commission, and that some satisfactory arrangement 
would have ensued between him and the president. Mr. 
Madison not being at Washington when the tender of Gene- 
ral Harrison's resignation arrived there, the Secretary of War, 
General Armstrong, who did not esteem General Harrison, and 
had the president's authority to persevere in the obnoxious sys- 
tem of orders, instantly accepted General Harrison's resignation, 
and suggested General Jackson to supply the vacancy. Thus 
closed the military career of William Henry Harrison ; who 
afterwards served as a member of both Houses of Congress, on 
a foreign mission to Colombia, in South America, which he soli- 
cited, was elevated from the clerkship of a court in Cincinnati to 
the presidency, and after one short month of treacherous triumph 
in that office, crowned his good fortune by premature death in 
the presidential mansion. The house was thronged with people, 
even the chamber in which he died, not free from idle intrusion. 
He expired with incoherent words of patriotism on his lips, 
before difficulties and distractions, to which his administration 
was inevitably destined, leaving the world with most men of all 
parties inclined to think well of his character, to magnify his 
virtues, extenuate his foibles, regret his death, and celebrate his 
memory. 

At Mrs. Madison's drawing-room, in the same mansion in 
which he died, in the end of the year 1813, on his triumphant 
return, going homeward from the north-western frontier, he was 
a g av > jocular, and pleasant man, vain of his success. A hand- 



CHAP. VI.] ILLUMINATION. \Q\ 

some and highly connected lady still living, told the president 
that General Harrison had received her commands to meet her 
at that drawing-room. But that he cannot do, said Mr. Madi- 
son, because he left Washington this morning, with his horses 
and attendants, all at the door of this house, and must be now 
some twenty or thirty miles on his way to the west. <> Still," 
replied the lady, archly, " he must be here, for I laid my com- 
mand upon him, and he is too gallant a man to disobey me." 
The president rejoined with his manner of gentle, but positive 
assurance, " we shall soon see whose orders he obeys." The 
question was presently settled by the general's appearance, with 
his military attendants in full costume, the lady smiling at her 
triumph over the most successful American general of that day, 
and the President of the United States. Steamboats were just 
beginning, rail-roads unknown, stage coaches extremely incon- 
venient, national, and even turnpike roads very rare at that 
time, when most journeys, particularly to the west, were per- 
formed in the saddle. The daughter of one of the Ohio senators 
accompanied her father five hundred miles from Chilicothe to 
Washington on horseback. The wife of another senator not 
only rode fifteen hundred miles on horseback, but passed through 
several Indian settlements for many nights without a house to 
lodge in. It may be added that her husband's colleague in the 
senate was born in Paris, and bred to the church in France. 

Perry's and Harrison's victories gave us our first public re- 
joicings for a victory by a fleet, and a victory by an army. For 
the first time Philadelphia was illuminated by authority, in Octo- 
ber 1813, when the city councils contained majorities of the war 
party. Without that preponderance, probably, there would have 
been no such show, as English attachments still then prevailed 
to so great a degree, that there were persons who declared they 
illuminated not for American victories, but those of the allies of 
England over Bonaparte. A boat on fire was dragged through 
the streets that night by lads, who stopped before the dark man- 
sion of a gentleman who refused to put any light in his windows. 
The mayor of the city, John Barker, addressed them in his happy 
strain of popular oratory, to prevent violence to the house which 
dared to be dark on such an occasion. Wild law, as Locke calls 
it, lynch law, as termed in the United States, is often provoked, 
though it may not be justified, by some inconsiderate defiance, 



192 JOSEPH HOPKINSON. [OCT., 1813. 

like this challenge of a torch. Has an individual a moral right, 
when a city is illuminated, to put his veto on the proceeding ? 
Throwing the tea overboard at Boston introduced the revolution 
which has lighted both hemispheres with other revolutions. The 
owner of the rebel house was the late Judge Joseph Hopkinson, 
son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lived to 
acknowledge cordially, the advantages of a war of which he 
once denied the justice as sincerely ; a gentleman distinguished 
as a member of Congress, as a judge of the federal District Court, 
as a writer, as an orator, and as one of many who confessed that 
the war of 1812, which he opposed, was happy in its influences. 



CHAP. VII.] COAST WARFARE. J93 



CHAPTER VII. 

COAST WARFARE.— ARRIVAL OF ADMIRAL WARREN WITH BRITISH 
FLEETS.— BLOCKADES OF THE UNITED STATES EXCEPT NEW ENG- 
LAND.— MARAUDING EXPEDITIONS OF ADMIRAL COCKBURN.-BURNING 
HAVRE DE GRACE, FRENCHTOWN, FREDERICKTOWN, GEORGETOWN.— 
ENEMY REPULSED AT LEWISTOWN.— DEFEATED AT CRANEY ISLAND. 
—FEEBLENESS OF NAVAL POWER IN LAND WARFARE.— ITS ILLE- 
GALITIES.— ATTEMPT TO BURN THE FRIGATE CONSTELLATION — 
CAPTURE OF HAMPTON BY BRITISH LAND AND NAVAL FORCES.— 
BARBARITIES THERE.— MR. CLAY'S MOTION IN CONGRESS FOR A 
COMMITTEE TO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT.— COMMITTEE APPOINTED, 
NATHANIEL MACON CHAIRMAN.— HIS POLITICAL PORTRAIT. 

As hostilities began in the north-west by Hull's invasion of 
Canada, and were prosecuted in that quarter from August, 1812 
till October, 1813, when they closed by the expulsion of the 
English from nearly all places there except Mackinaw, the chain 
of narrative has pursued those occurrences without interruption 
from the beginning to the end, except by the chapter upon the 
first session of Congress. We now return to an earlier period, 
in order to give some account of the war on the Atlantic sea- 
board, in the year 1813. 

Mr. Augustus Foster, the English minister at Washington 
when war was declared, was a young man of not much capacity 
to foresee the probability of it. Surrounded there by oppo- 
nents of the war, filling his drawing-rooms and partaking of his 
hospitality, members of Congress and others, who discredited 
such an event because they hoped it would not take place, it 
came upon him and his government by surprise, who were, for 
the moment, as much unprepared for it as ours. When the 
orders in council were repealed on the 23d June, 1812, almost 
simultaneously with our declaration of war, the English expecta- 
tion was so strong of its being immediately put a stop to, that 
Mr. Foster's first step, when he reached Halifax, on his way to 
England, was to send to the Governor-General of Canada, to 
propose to the American government terms of pacification, 
vol. i. — 17 



194 COAST WARFARE. [MARCH, 1813. 

rather than to accelerate at Halifax, or to send to England for, 
the means of hostilities. The party opposed to war encouraged 
the British minister's persuasion that it was impossible. They 
assured him, as no doubt he did his government, that it never 
would be declared, however much it might be threatened, and 
when the British orders in council were repealed, that govern- 
ment had every reason to be confident that it neither could nor 
would be persevered in. Great Britain was, moreover, at that 
moment, absorbed by her stupendous struggle with France, at 
an expenditure for that year of five hundred millions of dollars. 
Her statesmen had, therefore, neither time, means, nor thought to 
bestow upon a remote and comparatively insignificant conflict on 
this side of the Atlantic, with an unarmed, unwarlike, and divided 
people, most of whose maritime portions deprecated hostilities — 
for which, it was well known, the executive had no great inclina- 
tion, and it was supposed even Congress were not well disposed. 
Nearly seven months, therefore, elapsed after the declaration of 
war, before England took any important step of counteraction. 
The English manifesto (whose argument will be noticed in 
another place, but which is mentioned here only to introduce its 
date), was not issued till the 9th January, 1813. The first of 
those illegal orders of blockade which Great Britain had then 
interpolated into at least her own version of the law of nations, 
blockade of the Chesapeake and Delaware, was not proclaimed 
till the 26th December, 1812. British naval forces on the 
American coasts and stations did not appear in any formidable 
numbers, till February, 1S13; on the 4th of which month and 
year, Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, then naval commander- 
in-chief, took possession of Hampton Roads, in the Chesapeake 
Bay, with two ships of the line, four frigates, and several smaller 
vessels of war. In March, 1813, Captain Beresford, in the 
Poictiers seventy-four gun-ship, which had been on our coast the 
preceding October, when that vessel recaptured the Frolic and 
took the Wasp, soon after the Frolic surrendered to the Wasp — 
the Poictiers seventy-four, with the Belvidera frigate, took pos- 
session of Delaware Bay. In the spring of the year 1813, the 
British fleets on the American coast and stations from Halifax to 
Bermuda consisted of six seventy-four gun ships, thirteen frigates 
of various sizes, rated from thirty-eight to thirty-two guns, and 
eighteen sloops of war rated from eighteen to twenty-two guns, 



CHAP. VII.] BLOCKADES. „ 195 

all under the command of Admiral Warren ; most of them in 
the Chesapeake Bay, a few in the Delaware Bay, and others 
distributed along the coast as was deemed necessary. By that 
time the American frigate Constitution had taken the British 
frigate Guerriere, the Wasp sloop of war had taken the Frolic, 
the frigate United States had taken the Macedonian, the Con- 
stitution had taken the Java, the Hornet had taken the Pea- 
cock; and the naval prowess of the United States was established 
while yet their naval power was incompetent to cope with that 
of Great Britain. On the 20th March, 1813, the whole coast of 
the United States was declared to be in a state of blockade, with 
the exception of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hamp- 
shire. Why this invidious discrimination pretermitted Connec-r 
ticut, was not explained. The object of the exception of several 
states was obviously to sow dissension among the United States, 
by inflicting British vengeance on those parts which refused to 
make peace without relinquishment of impressment, and to 
favour other parts, whose people and constituted authorities were 
clamorous for peace upon almost any terms. England always 
misapprehended the force of the Union. 

As soon as the first of these blockades was knowu in Europe, 
complaints of them were made by neutral powers to Great 
Britain; particularly by Sweden, on the 31st March, 1813, to 
whose minister, Kehauson, the English Secretary, Castlereagh, 
on the 11th April, gave assurance that neutral vessels, having 
sailed without notice of the blockade, would be relieved from its 
operation. The orders in council, and other such violations of 
maritime law, had begun to be generally questioned if not con- 
demned, even in England. Still, by proclamation from Halifax 
on the 16th November, IS 13, Admiral Warren, to what was 
called strict and rigorous blockade of the Chesapeake, the Dela- 
ware, and the forts and harbours of New York, Charlestown, 
Port-Royal, Savannah, and the river Mississippi, superadded the 
sea-coast from Montauk Point along Long-Island, all ports and 
harbours, bays and creeks, on the sea-coast of New Jersey, Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Geor- 
gia ; declaring that he had stationed sufficient naval force to 
maintain and enforce these blockades in the most strict and 
rigorous manner. This declaration was palpably false. No 
such force had been or could be stationed. The proclamation of 



196 COAST WARFARE. [MARCH, 1813. 

it, as the admiral announced, by virtue of orders from London, 
was to revive the orders in council in one of their most illegal 
and offensive breaches of the laws of nations. 

Till the overthrow of Napoleon disengaged more of their navy 
and all their army, there were few land forces with the ships-of- 
war sent to this country early in 1813 : none sufficient to attempt 
to subdue any part, or make a serious impression. Some two or 
three thousand foreign renegades, called Chasseurs Brittaniques, 
enlisted in Spain, from among the prisoners and vagabonds 
taken or found there, if not intended, too well calculated for 
marauding and despicable incursions, came with Warren's 
squadron, whose second in command was a notorious freebooter, 
Admiral George Cockburn. With these materials, of no doubt 
considerable annoyance and expense to the general government, 
some of the States, and many localities, extending from French- 
town in Delaware to Portsmouth in North Carolina, but effecting 
no great injury, and even doing some good by their brigandage, 
the British naval means were employed all the spring, summer 
and part of the autumn of 1813. 

War, if one of the ways of Providence, and scourges of man- 
kind, though lawfully to be waged with intense and dreadful 
severity, is nevertheless always mitigated by recognized acts of 
governments, by which certain exceptions to its rigours with 
courtesy and clemency infuse a generous indulgence into its trans- 
actions, softening some of their rancour and ruin. For more than 
thirty years of highly prosperous peace, a hostile foot had never 
trod the American soil, except the Indians on the frontier; and 
since the famous Spanish Armada in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth, excepting civil wars, our English kindred were even less 
accustomed to personal experience of war's calamities. It may 
be that long exemption rendered us peculiarly sensitive to such 
distresses. Yet hostilities between Great Britain and the United 
States seem to be more than others bereft of humanity. Indians 
and slaves are always employed in them, and in amphibious war- 
fare there is necessarily more licentiousness in the assailant, and 
annoyance to the places attacked, than when either great armies 
or fleets meet in general engagements, whose effects are com- 
monly to compel whole regions to submission, rendering it the 
interest of conquerors to do as little harm as possible to their 
conquests. War between this country and that has always been 



CHAP. VII.] COAST WARFARE. 197 

civil war, Indian war, at least threatened servile war, war by- 
land, war by sea, and war by both sea and land together. 
Armed vessels seizing unexpectedly on unarmed places, armed 
enemies landing under their protection, to enforce ashore the 
more licentious hostilities of the ocean, to seize, spoil, and devas- 
tate, not to conquer and remain, but to plunder and escape as 
soon as the mischief is done ; — these vexatious and expensive 
inroads are war's most odious and despicable terrors. Free- 
booters, stealing by night from their vessels, to plunder, ravage, 
and then retreat before defenceless places can resist them, while 
exercising indisputable rights of war, yet perpetrate its worst 
inflictions. The effect of the war of 1812 and 1813, its moral 
effect on the United States, was to surprise this country at the 
unlooked-for hostilities of Great Britain. Till war was declared, 
it was, as the president's war message argued, waged in fact by 
England alone, without retaliation by the United States. Through- 
out the year 1812 both countries were amazed to discover, that 
on the ocean, where not a sail was said to spread but by English 
permission, the American marine, both commercial and military, 
suffered less injury, and inflicted more than that of Great Britain. 
On the land, where our power was so much the greatest, her 
superior officers, skill and intrepidity, with savage reinforcements, 
everywhere worsted American attacks. Till war had continued 
nearly a year, Great Britain was not the assailant. In 1813, 
when her forces became such, nothing was more unexpected than 
the paltriness of their capacity for harm, and the meanness of 
their attempts to do it. British character by sea sunk as low 
and as fast as American character rose by sea and fell by land. 
It was not only on the high seas, in sea fights there, that this 
result took place: which was as forcibly realized from British futi- 
lities and barbarities, with land and sea forces combined in coast 
warfare. The arrival of British tieets in our defenceless waters, 
bringing with them undefined but fearful impressions of British 
naval enterprise and power, was the signal for a series of little 
marauding attacks, by no means as considerable or formidable as 
those of the buccaneers in the tropical regions of America two 
centuries before. Lewistown, a small fishing place on Delaware 
Bay, Frenchtown, a hamlet of three houses in the State of Dela- 
ware, Havre de Grace, a village of some fifty or sixty houses, 
Fredericktown and Georgetown, small villages in Maryland, 

17* 



198 COAST WARFARE. [MARCH, 1813. 

Hampton, an insignificant outport of Norfolk in Virginia, Ports- 
mouth in North Carolina, and Norfolk, the only town of any 
importance, in all this range of wretched mischief, together with 
divers barns, stables, mills, foundries, bridges, cottages, and other 
isolated and extremely humble objects of unworthy molesta- 
tion, were surprised by night, ravaged, burned, plundered and 
deserted by British officers of high rank, whose renown preceded 
them as seamen of great exploits, and gentlemen incapable of 
such paltry malfeasance. Market shallops, oyster smacks, plea- 
sure boats, whatever in customary and civilized hostilities is left 
undisturbed, became the prey, not of boatswains, or midshipmen, 
but of commanders and admirals, headed by one of soldierly air 
and gentlemanly manners, Admiral Cockburn, afterwards the com- 
panion and intimate of the profligate prince regentof Great Britain, 
called by his courtiers the first gentleman of Europe. Nothing 
in the whole war, not their naval defeats, left so unfavourable an 
idea of English maritime capacity as the degrading hostilities of 
these little better than piratical incursions, which must have 
tended as much to lower the tone of English seafaring pride, as 
they did to elevate the strongly contrasted character of that of 
American mariners, whose very privateers never descended to 
such unworthy acts. In very few instances was the supposed 
character of British seamen kept up by ihem anywhere. In 
the coast warfare, their boasted trident was trailed in the dust of 
extremely contemptible warfare. At some of the places attacked 
they succeeded indeed to rifle them of furniture, or burn people's 
dwellings. But for the most part their pillage was as harmless 
as it was unmanly. 

On my way from Philadelphia to Washington, I found the 
whole country excited by these depredations. Cockburn's name 
was on every tongue, with various particulars of his incredibly 
coarse and blackguard misconduct. At Frenchtown and Havre 
de Grace, and in various other places, they showed me the ves- 
tiges of his wanton vexations : a henroost robbed, (I state this 
fact as literally true,) the panes of glass in a church window 
broken to pieces, Commodore Rogers' residence at Havre de 
Grace defaced, and many other remains of little spite and con- 
temptible hostility. Since a large British army landed in that 
neighbourhood in 1777, under Lords Howe and Comwallis, de- 
feated Washington at Brandywine and Germantown, and took 



CHAP. VII.] LEWISTOWN. 199 

Philadelphia, there had been no marks of war there till 1813. 
Then cannon planted as posts were dng up to be mounted, 
squads of militia and volunteers were under exercise along the 
roads, gentlemen of distinction serving as dragoons and privates: 
the whole region roused to self-defence against invasion, whLh 
caused universal feelings of execration. About two years after- 
wards, on my return home from Congress, that road was one 
continued blaze of illumination for peace just ratified. 

Not one of these derogatory little invasions succeeded in mak- 
ing any injurious impression. Some of the burglarious attacks 
were so far successful, that barns, boats, or other insignificant 
objects were destroyed by the seamen before they could be over- 
taken, and prevented escaping to their shipping. But in every 
case of considerable effort, especially those by land forces, com- 
bined with marines and sailors, particularly at Craney Island and 
Norfolk, the enemy was signally repulsed, and driven back to his 
ships of war with much loss. At Lewistown, Colonel Samuel 
B. Davis and Major Hunter withstood a bombardment of some 
severity from the Poictiers and Belvidera, wantonly inflicted on a 
harmless village, as the English said, to compel our people to 
supply them with fresh provisions. After firing a great number 
of cannon balls and bombs upon the village, with no effect, they 
were beaten off, and withdrew without accomplishing any other 
purpose than convincing the country how easy it was to repel 
such attacks, and that its thanks were due to Colonel Davis for 
his good conduct in proving it. The president conferred on him 
the commission of lieutenant-colonel of a newly-raised regiment 
of regulars. Colonel Davis had been a midshipman in the French 
fleet defeated by the English on the first of June, 1794, after- 
wards served as an officer on board of a privateer commanded 
by Captain Barney, was at one time a member of the legislature 
of Pennsylvania, and is still living at advanced age. 

The frigate Constellation, commanded by Captain Stewart, 
blockaded at Norfolk, was a legitimate object of English cap- 
ture ; and they made several attempts to effect it, which were all 
defeated by her crew under Captain Tarbell, and the Virginia 
militia under General Robert Taylor, a gentleman of the bar, 
much distinguished by the skill, judgment and success he displayed 
in command of the troops in and about Norfolk ; a few regulars, 
the rest militia and volunteers, together with the crew of the 



200 CRANEY ISLAND. [JUNE, 1813. 

Constellation. Her defence was arranged with the usual ability 
of Captain Stewart, though neither he nor Captain Gordon who 
succeeded him in command of that frigate, was present at the 
several attempts of the enemy to take her, which were completely 
defeated. 

On the 22dof June, IS 13, (the anniversary of the capture of the 
unlucky frigate Chesapeake, in those waters in 1807, by a British 
squadron,) while Congress was in session at Washington, Admi- 
rals Warren and Cockburn, with between two and three thousand 
land forces, under General Sir Sidney Beck with, joined to the sea- 
men and marines of the fleet, made a serious and regularly planned 
attempt to take Craney Island, a small out-post of the sea-port of 
Norfolk, with but few inhabitants and frail defences. They were 
totally defeated with considerable loss ; loss not only of lives, but 
of credit, for their attack was neither vigorous nor well sustained. -\ 

About twenty-five hundred troops, with fifty boats full of men/ZOOU-J 
landed from the enemy's squadrou on thft i s kttt d. A few cannon S 
under Major Faulkner, and Captain Emmerson, Captain Tarbell, 
with one hundred and fifty seamen from the Constellation, alto- 
gether not more than between five and six hundred men, with 
batteries of not much force, but perfectly well served, sufficed to 
repulse the English, who lost about two hundred in killed, 
wounded, and deserted, besides sinking several of their barges, 
among the rest, a very large one called the Centipede, full of men, 
well armed, nearly all of whom were killed or taken. This was 
legitimate warfare; but one of those feeble performances for which 
all the English amphibious hostilities were remarkable ; with the 
single exception of the capture of Washington. None of the expe- 
rience of the whole war was more consolatory or unexpected, than 
the great difference between the naval character and deeds of Great 
Britain. The English soldiery always proved more enterprising 
and formidable than their seamen ; and for reasons which will 
appear in my chapter on naval affairs. The boasted marine of 
Great Britain, much overrated at any rate, was in 1813 far below 
the standard of power universally ascribed to it, except by the 
American navy. Admiral Warren's official account of the re- 
pulse at Craney Island, dated on board the ship San Domingo, 
the 24th of June, 1813, acknowledged the failure of the attempt, 
made, he said, to get at and destroy the Constellation, and dock- 
yard, and repulsed by the militia and seamen of that vessel. — 



CHAP. VII.] HAMPTON. 201 

Captain Hanchett, of his Majesty's Ship Diadem, said Admiral 
Warren's dispatch, who volunteered his services, and lod the 
division of boats with great gallantry, was severely wounded by 
a ball in the thigh. This Captain Hanchett was a natural son 
of George the Third, born some time after his marriage to the 
queen, by whom he left so numerous a progeny, among them 
three kings, George the Fourth, William the Fourth, and the 
King of Hanover. Not long from the time when the regent of 
Great Britain congratulated his kingdom on the pitch of grandeur 
it reached by dictating peace to France, in the French capital — 
a brother of that, regent was repulsed by a handful of militia, in 
an attempt to capture a miserable island in the Chesapeake. 

The repulse at Craney Island on the 22d of June, 1S13, was 
outrageously revenged on the 25th of that month at Hampton, 
by brutalities not less disgusting or inhuman than those which 
disgraced the British army at the River Raisin in January. A 
combined land and naval force under Admiral Cockburn, and 
General Beckwith, stormed Hampton, a small fishing place in 
the chops of the channel of Hampton Roads, too far from Nor- 
folk to be supported from there, and no irreparable loss to its de- 
fence, which the enemy was never able to overcome. Early in 
the morning, from thirty to forty British barges filled with men, 
approached the mouth of Hampton Creek, from the direction of 
Newport's Noose. Our troops were formed on their encampment, 
divided from Hampton by a narrow creek, over which there was 
a slight bridge. After a cannonade for some time, the British 
showing no inclination to advance from their barges, one men 
moved forward to meet theirs : our company of riflemen, led by 
Captain Servant, and a troop of dragoons by Captain Cooper. 
The enemy continued firing grape shot and rockets. The action 
was kept up with spirit for some time, till the superior numbers of 
the enemy compelled Major Crutchfield, the militia officer in com- 
mand, to order a retreat, which was, however, deliberately con- 
ducted, in good order, and frequent firing with execution on the 
advancing column of the enemy. Major Corbin, throughout the 
engagement gallantly exposed, was severely wounded. Cap- 
tains Shield, Herndon, Ashby, Brown, Miller and Carey, of 
the militia, Adjutant Anderson, Lieutenant Armistead, Captain 
Goodall of the regular artillery, every officer, and all the men en- 
gaged, especially Captain Pryor, with his lieutenants Lively and 



202 HAMPTON. [JUNE, 1813. 

Jones, and their brave matrosses, behaved with becoming spirit 
on this occasion, which cost the enemy more than two hundred 
men, while the Americans killed were but seven. The enemy 
landed, and had in the battle not less than twenty-five hundred 
men. Our force fell short of four hundred and fifty. 

Whether from exasperation at former defeats, and the obsti- 
nate resistance experienced with such disproportion of loss on 
this occasion, or from the ordinary wantonness of English marine 
warfare, their partial success at Hampton was attended by abomi- 
nable misdeeds, of which not only Norfolk, Richmond, Virginia, 
the neighbouring newspapers, particularly the National Intelli- 
gencer, but Congress and the whole country were filled with 
details. It was universally said, and generally believed, that 
Admiral Cockburn promised the men as inducement to this cap- 
ture, the contents of the banks at Norfolk, of whose fall that of 
Hampton was to be the preliminary, three days plunder of the 
inhabitants said to be very rich, and free use of all fine women. 
A correspondence respecting the enormities committed took place 
between our General Taylor and General Beckwith, in which 
the latter, without denying, justified them as provoked by our 
firing on a flag of truce, which was not true, and as perpetrated 
by the French, Spanish, and other banditti, foreign renegades 
enlisted into the British army, known as Chasseurs Brittaniques. 
Unused as our people were to the horrors of war, exaggerated 
reports of these excesses may have been circulated. But, making 
deductions and allowances, the truth remained in shocking proof 
of unwarrantable barbarities. Women, who could not escape, 
were hunted down by perpetrators of every indignity on their per- 
sons. No help was given to the wounded. The dead were left 
unburied. The females were not only violated by these wretches, 
but they encouraged the slaves to violate their own mistresses. 
The sick were murdered in bed ; the maimed and the decrepid from 
age. Silver plundered from dwellings, was perhaps not illegitimate 
spoil. But the pulpit and communion table of the Episcopal 
church at Hampton, (the Church of England, as commonly called 
in this country,) together with all the plate, although the donor's 
name was engraved on it, together with the parish to which it 
belonged, were sacrilegious booty. Shirts and shoes stripped 
from aged persons, indiscriminate rape, one woman ravished by 
many men— these, and many more such outrages, undoubtedly 



CHAP. VII.] HAMPTON. 203 

committed, it would wrong history not to record, and civilization 
not to reprobate. 

Committees of citizens were appointed to verify and report the 
facts, and to proceed to the British fleet on the rjccasion. Two 
respectable gentlemen, Thomas Griffin, whoj-rad been a member 
of Congress, opposed to the war, and J*h?utenant Robert Lively, 
on this duty, reported that from all the information they could 
procure, from sources too respectable to permit them to doubt, 
they were compelled to believe that acts of violence were per- 
petrated disgraceful to the age. The sex, hitherto guarded by 
the soldier's honour, escaped not the rude assaults of superior 
force, nor could disease disarm the foe of his ferocity. The 
apology that these atrocities were committed by the French sol- 
diers, attached to the British forces in our waters, is no justifica- 
tion." The town of Hampton, and the adjacent country, were 
given up to the indiscriminate plunder of a licentious soldiery. In 
many houses, not a knife, fork, or plate was left. British officers 
plundered the stores. Medicines from apothecaries' shops were 
thrown into the street. The sails were stripped from a wind- 
mill. Trunks, closets, drawers, were broken open and rifled. — 
Much of the plunder was deposited in the yard of the house 
where Admiral Cockburn and General Beckwith lodged. A man 
long confined to bed by extreme illness, was shot in his wife's arms, 
to revenge, as the monsters said, our militia refusing quarters to 
Frenchmen shot at in a barge after it surrendered ; a slander, 
which, even if true, afforded no justification. A lady was seized 
and stripped naked by five or six ruffians in scarlet regimentals, 
who spoke good English, and her body subjected to the most 
abominable indecencies. At one instant, escaping, she fled, with 
her female child, to the water, from which she was dragged by 
these ruffians for further abuse. An official report to the Gover- 
nor of Virginia, confirmed these indelible blots on English man- 
hood. It was then, too, for the first time, that Cockburn and his 
followers began to steal slaves; not to emancipate, but sell them 
in the West India Islands. A company of slaves was also formed, 
uniformed, officered, and incorporated with the English troops. 
Colonel McDowell wrote to the Governor of Virginia, that the 
gentlemen sent with a flag of truce on board Admiral Warren's 
ship, the San Domingo, and Admiral Cockburn's ship, the Marl- 
borough, in order to reclaim the slaves, (admitted by treaty 



204 HAMPTON. [JUNE, 1813. 

after the war, to be unlawful prizes,) ascertained, after some 
shabby evasions, that they had been forwarded to Bermuda. — 
These indefensible and dishonourable proceedings, were accom- 
panied by Admiral Warren's election to be vice-president of 
the Bible Society of Halifax. He was an old man, too promi- 
nent in such misconduct, but not so audaciously so as Admiral 
Cockburn, who set the English navy an example as pernicious 
on the sea-coast, as Proctor's, near the same time, to the English 
army on the western frontier. 

These violations of national honour and usage deserve expo- 
sure, not only as part of the history of their transaction, but 
because of their denial or apology by disaffected and unpatriotic 
Americans then. They declared that men in the pay and em- 
ploy of government imputed unusual and unexampled cruelty 
to the officers and soldiers of the enemy, in order to alienate 
Americans from a nation with which they said we were more 
naturally connected by the ties of common origin, language, 
religion, freedom, laws, manners and interests, than with any 
other people. They appealed to British character, the establish- 
ment of many successive centuries, of which generosity and 
humanity were the brightest traits, to refute such calumnies. It 
was impossible that British naval and military officers could be 
other than magnanimous and humane. The reports of their 
brutal conduct at Hampton are unfounded, said these apologists 
for monstrous enormities. Yet were they too true, and too well 
attested, to be contradicted. Their effect was gradually to disen- 
chant this country of colonial reverence and party disaffection. 
Every day the conviction gained ground that the lesson of the 
Declaration of Independence is wise, to consider the English as 
enemies in war, in peace friends, like other nations. 

The massacres at Frenchtown in January, and at Hampton in 
June, had salutary influences on the operations of war, the pro- 
ceedings of Congress, and the sentiments of the United States. 
The lesson was severe ; but it required inhuman English miscon- 
duct to eradicate the deep-seated feeling of national attachment, 
which prevailed on the Atlantic seaboard, to a mother country. 
In the west, beyond the Alleghany Mountains, the yeomanry 
and rural inhabitants, generally, of the United States, were more 
independent. They nearly all sustained the war. But those 
who traded with England, and their dependents, the merchants, 



CHAP. VII.] COAST WARFARE. 205 

lawyers, brokers and shopkeepers, together with many of the 
New England clergy, long persisted in disbelief of English 
wrongs, and disaffection to the government undertaking to 
avenge them. The permanent, as well as immediate, effects of 
the enemy's outrages were providential remedies of an inveterate 
distemper. While throughout the country at large they operated 
to remove prejudices and promote patriotism, their influence was 
beneficial at the seat of government, in all its departments. 
Congress they inspired to strong and united reaction; while they 
cured the executive of lingering hope that peace was attainable 
without the utmost efforts and sufferings of war. The fleets 
and land troops that sailed up the Potomac and Chesapeake 
towards Washington and Annapolis, were the same of whose 
enormities every one had heard at Hampton. In another respect 
the effect was excellent. The enemy taught us not only to 
detest, but to despise him. The failure of his attempt at Craney 
Island, of his repeated attempts to take the Constellation, the 
transient and timorous nature of his incursions, their paltry de- 
structiveness, their amazing want of enterprise and boldness, 
relieved an unarmed country of much of its preconceived ap- 
prehension, by making known a truth, told by all history, that 
naval operations begun and sustained from a distance, are seldom 
to be feared. 

After those British fugitive amphibious inroads had taken place 
at Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, Fredericktown and George- 
town, but before the before-mentioned occurrences at Craney 
Island, Hampton and Norfolk, on Monday, the 24th of May, 
1813, in the midst, therefore, of these scenes of marauding and 
plunder, the session of Congress began. The president's message 
reminded us of the obligation of adapting measures on the sup- 
position that the only way to peace was vigorous employment of 
the resources of war. And painful as the reflection is, it said 
this duty is particularly enforced by the spirit and manner in 
which the war continues to be waged by the enemy, who, unin- 
fluenced by the unvaried examples of humanity set them, are 
adding to the savage fury of it on one frontier, a system of plun- 
der and conflagration on the others, equally forbidden by respect 
for national character, and by the established rules of civilized 
warfare. 

Next day Mr. Clay was elected speaker, and the oath admi- 
vol. i. — IS 



206 SPIRIT OF WAR. [MAY, 1813. 

nistered to him by my venerable colleague, William Findley, one 
of the oldest men and members of the House of Representatives. 
The day after, Peterson Goodwyn, of Virginia, submitted the 
customary motion for the appointment of the standing committees, 
which were then much fewer than since. Mr. Clay, placing Mr. 
Macon in the chair, with the promptitude and decision of his 
character, forthwith called the attention of Congress and the 
country to the outrages at the river Raisin, the incursions as 
conducted in the Chesapeake, and the enemy's general unwar- 
rantable conduct, by moving a resolution that so much of the 
president's message as related to the spirit and manner in which 
the war had been waged, should be referred to a select commit- 
tee. Raising his fine voice in the splendid hall, surrounded by 
representatives of the country, most of them strangers to him and 
to each other, with great animation and force, the speaker, with 
bitter recollections of the defeat and destruction of his Kentucky 
companions, expressed his abhorrence of the enemy's inhumani- 
ties, not only the massacre of our citizens on the western frontier, 
but the conflagrations of hamlets, villages and farm-houses on 
the maritime border. The latter outrage has not been denied, 
said he ; but apologized for on the pretence that we had first 
fired on their flag. Although he believed the allegation false, he 
was glad it was thought necessary to make any apology. There 
ought to be inquiry. If the facts were as reported, they called 
for the indignation of all Christendom, and should be embodied 
in an authentic document. Mr. Clay enjoyed Mr. Madison's 
confidence : and it is probable that this motion was made by 
preconcert with him. No opposition was made to it, unusual as 
it was for the presiding officer to leave the chair, as soon as the 
House was organized, take the floor, and present a motion for 
the appointment of an important select committee, the composi- 
tion of which would be his own act. But Mr. Clay was not a 
man to be deterred by such considerations. Soon after, how- 
ever, the matter appeared to be settled, Mr. Thomas Grosvenor, 
of the New York delegation, the readiest and boldest debater of 
the House, one of the strongest opponents of the war and admi- 
nistration, made a motion to reconsider, which motion is apt to 
open what seems to be closed. He desired to amend the reso- 
lution, by adding to it the words, and by this nation, after the 
word enemy: that is, that the spirit and manner in which we 



CHAP. VII.] SELECT COMMITTEE. 207 

had carried on the war, should be authenticated, as well as that 
of the English. As the president's message, said Mr. Grosvenor, 
contrasts our humanity with their barbarity, I wish to see the 
evidence of the former. This, a specious intimation, was warmly 
repelled by Robert Wright, of Maryland, an elderly gentleman, 
quick with retort of all kinds, whether with tongue, pen, or pistol, 
for he had fought some desperate duels. The amendment, he 
objected, cast imputation, a libel, on our land and naval officers, 
who had distinguished themselves as much by humanity as 
valour. After a short discussion, Grosvenors motion was re- 
jected, but by only a majority of twelve : and the speaker an- 
nounced the special committee, without putting Mr. Grosvenor 
upon it, according to common parliamentary usage to place those 
members on committees, who take an active part in debating 
the subject matter. The war members of the committee were 
Nathaniel Macon, John Forsyth, Robert Wright, James Clarke 
and Perry W. Humphreys: the federalists were William Gaston 
and Thomas Cooper. Mr. Gaston was one of the ablest and 
most pleasing speakers of the House, a leading member of the 
opposition, afterwards Chief Justice of North Carolina. James 
Clarke was afterwards Governor of Kentucky, John Forsyth, 
Governor of Georgia, Senator of the United States, Minister to 
Spain, and Secretary of State. Mr. Wright had been Governor 
of Maryland, and had represented that State in the Senate of the 
United States. This select committee did not make their report 
till the following December, 1813; when it appeared, and was 
printed in a volume of 200 pages ; written by John Forsyth. 
Of course it required time to procure the evidence and digest it. 
Under several heads the report explained : first, the bad treat- 
ment of American prisoners ; secondly, their detention as British 
subjects, as natives, or naturalized; third, detention of mariners 
as prisoners found in England when war was declared ; fourth, 
compulsory service of American seamen in British ships-of-war ; 
fifth, violation of flags of truce; sixth, ransom of American pri- 
soners from Indians in British service; seventh, pillage and 
destruction of private property in the Chesapeake Bay and 
neighbourhood; eighth, massacre and burning of prisoners, pil- 
lage and shooting of citizens, and burning of houses after surren- 
dering to British and under their protection ; ninth, outrages at 
Hampton — the last thus mentioned in the report. The shrieks of 



208 NATHANIEL MACON. [MAY, 1813. 

the innocent victims of infernal lust at Hampton were heard by 
the American prisoners, but were too weak to reach the ears or 
disturb the repose of British officers, whose duty as men required 
them to protect every female whom the fortune of war had 
thrown into their power. Human language affords no terms 
strong enough to express the emotions which the examination of 
the evidence has awakened. In the correspondence between the 
American and British commanders, will be found what is equi- 
valent to an admission of the facts by the latter. No punishment 
has followed conviction of the guilty. The power of retaliation 
being vested in the executive, no measure is proposed by this 
report. Such enormities, instead of inspiring terror, as was pro- 
bably intended, being calculated to produce the contrary effect, 
the committee close with a resolution that the president be 
requested to collect and present to the House evidence of every 
departure by the enemy, during the war, from the* ordinary mode 
of conducting it among civilized nations. 

Mr. Humphreys, of Tennessee, and Mr. Cooper, of Delaware, 
were not, I believe, in public view after that Congress. The 
other members of the select committee from whom this report 
emanated, were all conspicuous in various public stations, as 
governors, judges, foreign ministers, and secretaries. But none 
of them reached the posthumous celebrity which their chair- 
man's name has come to, no doubt without his either expecting or 
desiring it ; and as a remarkable specimen of American demo- 
cracy, it merits full exhibition. Representative democracy is a 
modern experiment in politics which has never yet been fully 
carried out. None of its disciples was more disposed than Mr. 
Macon for the trial: — so that candid portraiture of him is as 
curious as it may be edifying. 

Nathaniel Macon was a practical apostle of a sect of poli- 
ticians radically democratic, invincibly opposed to that small 
majority of the American people, who organized the federal 
constitution, modified to republican institutions, on the English 
model of regulation. Mr. Macon was opposed to it, as by far 
too monarchical. Hamilton dreaded anarchy, and deemed the 
English government the mildest form of republicaniz'ed monarchy. 
Jefferson dreaded monarchy, and thought that the American 
government should be original. Washington, perhaps, doubted 
the republican experiment, but was resolved to make it in 



CHAP. VII.l NATHANIEL MACON. 209 

good faith, though, as he said, it cost him the last drop of 
his blood. Macon had full faith in the most democratic institu- 
tions, willing to trust the people, further perhaps than Jefferson 
would have ventured, far beyond Washington, and to an extent 
which Hamilton considered anarchical. Madison, the disciple of 
Jefferson and admirer of Washington, took middle ground be- 
tween them all. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Macon 
all proved the sincerity of their professions, by practising them 
through life, and to the last, when beyond life's common climac- 
teric, when no selfish or improper motive could induce it ; calmly 
dying as they lived, entirely faithful to their respective princi- 
ples. Hamilton was cut off by an untimely death in the prime 
of life, killed in a duel at forty-seven years of age, by Burr, on 
the same spot and about the same time where and when his 
eldest son, was also killed in a duel. He, too, no doubt che- 
rished to the last the politics he professed. Selecting from the 
government of the Old World, ranging from the bowstring des- 
potism of Turkey, to the democratical royalty of a mother coun- 
try, the founders of an American constitution chose the latter as 
a model, reduced it to republicanism, confederation and much 
enlarged suffrage. Mr. Macon, a soldier of the American Re- 
volution, the native of a state where English tories were most 
vindictive and mischievous, and born, as he must have been, 
an iiii at republican, detestcl English monarchy, despised En- 
glish aristocracy, and never could have been reconciled to the 
turbulence of English democracy. He was a man of middle 
stature, between fifty and sixty years of age, when I first knew 
him, with a round, shining, playful countenance, bald and 
gray, always dressed in the same plain but not inelegant man- 
ner, and so peculiar in his ideas and conversation, that one of 
the Jersey members, told him, that if he should happen to 
be drowned, he should look for Macon's body up the stream I 
instead of floating with the current. Of a distinguished family, 
brought up to riches and accomplished education, he left Prince- 
ton College in the Revolution, not for an epaulette and small 
sword, but the musket and knapsack of a common soldier, as 
such enlisted and re-enlisted in the American army, served 
long in the ranks, at one time as a private under the command 
of his own brother, never, it is said, desiring to be commis- 
sioned as an officer. Lest this strange perversion of common 

18* 



210 NATHANIEL MACON. [MAY, 1813. 

ambition should seem to imply any dissolute vulgarity of dis- 
position, it should be added that his habits, tastes, and associa- 
tions, were all gentlemanly, perfectly temperate, and without the 
slightest touch of unsocial, gloomy or coarse propensity. Elected 
to the House of Commons of North Carolina, he unfurled there 
his radical banner in the same quiet and inoffensive way that 
always marked his singular career, opposing the adoption of the 
federal constitution with all his ability. In 1791, chosen to the 
House of Representatives of the United States, he remained 
there five and twenty years by continual re-elections, having 
filled the great station, for a time, of Speaker of that House. 
But neither his principles nor his habits fitted him for its indus- 
trious, onerous, and absolute, if not arbitrary, functions. To 
rule or govern was disagreeable to him, or to labour. As a 
speaker he practised the principles he always professed, of the 
utmost freedom ; letting the House alone to keep itself in order, 
without the presiding officer's interposition ; a principle, in 
theory, so true that seldom does a newly-elected speaker return 
thanks for that honour without reminding his suffragans of the 
House that he is but their reflected image, and that unless they 
keep themselves in order, it will be vain for him to attempt it. 

In 1816, Macon was translated to the Senate, as a represent- 
ative of North Carolina, in that body. In 1828, he voluntarily 
retired from public life, and spent the rest of his days at home, a 
planter and sportsman, to the last, fond of his game of whist, the 
chase and other recreations. Beloved by his family, neighbours 
and slaves, in charity with all mankind, at peace with himself, he 
died at a good old age, with much more veneration and influence 
than fall to the lot of many more conspicuous personages. His 
system of government was to govern as little as possible. Exten- 
sive dissension, and little legislation, he held to be the policy and 
duty of Congress. Let alone, was his policy for nations, for par- 
ties, and for individuals ; his strong preference in this respect, be- 
ing probably strengthened by plantation life and property, which 
beget intractable independence, and embolden proprietors to claim 
a sort of Polish veto against whatever crosses their homestead, 
or requires their submission. Six years' service for a senator, 
were in his opinion five too many, and one enough for a repre- 
sentative in Congress. Tyranny begins where annual elections 
end, was one of his maxims. Nothing is more miserable than 



CHAP. VII.] NATHANIEL MACON. 211 

a splendid and expensive government, was another. He was a 
constant advocate of frequent elections, that all offices should be 
elective, and for short terms of office, not as the only democratic, 
but likewise as the most durable tenure. High salaries he con- 
sidered mere baits for irregular, and ungovernable ambition. I 
have often heard him triumphantly argue, that the annual and 
even semi-annual judicial elections in parts of New England, 
were the best guarantee for faithful and permanent service ; and 
he would mention families kept in office from generation to gene- 
ration by such elections, as irrefutable proof of his opinion. 
Armies, navies, cities, and all coercive authority, including taxes, 
he opposed, as well as the good behaviour tenure, and political 
authority of the judiciary. Unbounded confidence in popular 
virtue was the religion of his politics. As during most of his 
life British power and influence were the monsters of republican 
aversion, he was invariably set against those Jefferson called 
Anglomen, looked with contempt upon all the imported aperies, 
and what many consider refinements of fashionable life, and with 
a stronger feeling than contempt on that American idolatry of 
England, which predominated till the war of 1812, and is not yet 
extinct. Jefferson, a free thinker, would level up to the doctrines 
of Franklin, Penn, Locke and Milton, and extirpate aristocratic, 
and regal encroachments, which have usurped the place of abo- 
riginal liberty and equality. Macon, not so deep in thought, 
literature or science as Jefferson, would have outstripped him 
in actual reform. But he was a passive, not active, radical, 
except by example. Negation was his ward and arm. His 
economy of the public money was the severest, sharpest, most 
stringent and constant refusal of almost any grant that could be 
proposed. Every one, with legislative experience, knows that 
many, if not most public donations, bounties, indemnities, and 
allowances are unjust, often unconstitutional, to individuals, com- 
monwealths, corporations, or companies. It requires courage, 
however, and fortitude to vote against pensions, compensations 
for alleged wrongs, and the various other demands on congres- 
sional charity. Mr. Macon had no such charity, disclaimed it 
altogether, and kept the public purse much more stingily than his 
own. With him not only was optimum vectigal parsimonia, 
parsimony the best subsidy, but unicum, the only one. No de- 
vice or contrivance could seduce his vote for such objects, which 



212 NATHANIEL MACON. [MAY, 1813. 

are the common contrivances for local popularity of most mem- 
bers of Congress, but were with him repudiated to the great 
gratification of a North Carolina constituency, not rich, and shar- 
ing few national favours of the kind. In the nearly forty years 
he served in Congress, no ten members gave so many negative 
votes. He was in opposition throughout much of the eight years 
of Washington's, and all the four of John Adams' administration; 
did not coincide with all of Jefferson's, and part of Madison's; 
preferred restrictions and measures of passive suffering, that he 
thought might prevent war, which he considered dangerous to 
republican institutions, though he voted for it as a necessary evil, 
and then against most of the strong acts proposed to carry it on. 
Though supporting the war with all his heart according to his 
own peculiar politics, when Monroe, as Secretary of War, called 
on Congress for conscription to raise an army, and Dallas, as 
Secretary of the Treasury, required all the taxes to be much 
increased, and others superadded, Macon voted against all these 
measures. It was alleged, however, by others besides him, 
eminent supporters of the war, that some of these measures, 
especially conscription, were of rigour beyond law. When Mr. 
Eppes, the son-in-law of Jefferson, chairman of the committee 
of Ways and Means, during the war, had constitutional scruples 
as to some of these measures, Monroe said that we should look 
to the constitution after war; but that with the capital sacked, 
and the enemy threatening us at all points, from Plattsburg to 
New Orleans, we must put forth the whole force of the nation, 
without too scrupulous regard to what was constitutional. When 
in patriotic effort, Dallas poured out a flood of paper in treasury 
notes, one of Macon's maxims was, that paper money was never 
beat. Without ever losing the confidence of his party, no mem- 
ber of it so often voted against them. Tenacious and inflexible, 
remonstrance availed nothing with him. He never quarreled 
about his frequent nays, but never abandoned or reduced them. 
Not taciturn or austere, he was a frequent speaker, always good- 
humoured and jocular, but always self-opinionated. Macon had 
ingrain preference for the advantages of rural over city life, to 
form the faculties both mental and bodily for distinction; for 
courage, eloquence, endurance, and every kind of eminence. No 
man should live, he said, where he can hear his neighbour's dog 
bark. Sometimes when a city member addressed the House to 



CHAP. VII.] NATHANIEL MACON. 213 

his satisfaction, he would jocosely say, I liked that: what a pity 
you were born and brought up in town; but for that, you might 
have come to something. Towns he thought unfavourable to the 
fervour and fortitude which stimulate excellence. Frivolous 
occupations take place of earnest contemplation and enterprize. 
Reading is not of the right sort, if there be not even too much of 
it. Rural life is less stagnant, more racy, more thoughtful, and 
self-dependent. When it is not only rural, but border life, full of 
exposure, adventure, and exploit, it obviously conduces to greater 
strength of character. Some savagism may become mixed with 
it, which does not detract from the strength, however it may 
occasionally tarnish, the civilization. Not one of the greatest Pre- 
sidents of the United States laid the basis of his elevation in a 
city. Washington, Napoleon, Jackson, were sylvan born — born 
to effort and endurance. I believe Macon never held any office 
by other than popular election. Indeed, he was too fond of ease 
for the laborious responsibility of executive place. He is an 
illustrious example of the eminence and celebrity attainable by 
faithful service in Congress, with moderate abilities, constant 
integrity, and no ulterior or untoward ambition. 

Few public speakers, secretaries, ministers, or judges, aspir- 
ants or incumbents of place by executive choice, fill, with pos- 
terity, so large a space in public esteem as Nathaniel Macon, 
or exercised as much influence while in any office. Born and 
educated among what Jefferson calls natural aristocracy, the 
aristocracy of virtue and talents, Macon's distinction is that he 
loved the people. Learning, eloquence and action were not his 
merits. During his nearly forty years of life in Congress, he 
hardly ever proposed any measure ; but sincerity, simplicity, 
moderation, forbearance and integrity gave him titles to respect 
which make even his memory influential. Artificial aristocracy, 
by birth or wealth, Jefferson deemed a mischievous ingredient 
in government, whose ascendancy should be prevented. But 
natural aristocracy, by virtue and talents, he regarded as the 
most precious gift of nature for the instruction, trusts and 
government of society ; and that form of government the best 
which provides most effectually for their pure selection into the 
offices of government. Some think that the aristocracy should 
be put in a separate chamber of legislation, where they may 
be hindered from doing mischief by co-ordinate branches, and 



214 NATHANIEL MACON. [MAY, 1813. 

be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering 
enterprizes of a majority of the people. " That," wrote Jeffer- 
son to Adams, " is your opinion ; while I think that the Ameri- 
can constitution provides a better remedy by leaving the free 
separation and election of the natural aristocracy from the mass, 
who will, in general, choose the good and the wise. Wealth 
will take care of itself. Cabals in the Senate of the United 
States furnish many proofs that to give an elevated class power 
to prevent mischief is to arm them for it." Macon's equality 
and radicalism went beyond Jefferson's. But he was an inactive 
reformer and merely by the force of example, as the American 
republic acts on the rest of the world. A planter, of moderate 
fortune, coveting no more, disliking the labour-gained wealth of 
professional life, and the chances of trade, he disregarded the 
vexatious vanities of riches or office, except that of serving the 
people as one of many law-makers, among whom, too, his rule 
was to do as little as possible. After serving a quarter of a cen- 
tury in the House of Representatives, what most would consider 
promotion to the Senate, was, perhaps, departure from his prin- 
ciples. Did he deem it rotation in office ? a principle of repub- 
lican government, of which Macon's twelve re-elections to the 
same seat in Congress, proved that he did not consider it appli- 
cable to elective places. Men grow insolent, said Tacitus, in a 
single year's public trust. Doubtless they should, by frequent 
recurrence of popular election, be continually subjected to that 
ordeal. But when incumbents of elective posts, like Macon, 
are faithful, they are not often supplanted without detriment to 
the constituency. When one party vanquishes another, it is but 
just that the principal places should be filled by the victorious. 
But abuse of this unquestionable principle as to others demoral- 
izes communities by pampering morbid thirst, and insatiable 
yearning for emolument, substitutes avarice for ambition. Does 
not Macon's success demonstrate that no American statesman 
can be successfully both ambitious and avaricious ? That he 
can no more prefer himself to the people, than serve mammon 
before God ? To be of the aristocracy of the democracy is 
common ambition ; but Macon's desire was to be of the demo- 
cracy of the aristocracy. 

Whatever,says Burke, writing of the French National Assem- 
bly, the distinguished few may have been, men of known rank 



CHAP. VII.] NATHANIEL MACON. 215 

or shining talents, it is the substance or mass of the body which 
constitutes its character, and must finally determine its direction. 
In all bodies, those who will lead must also, in a considerable 
degree, follow. Macon was a leading follower, not a summit, 
but part of the mass of Congress ; not a commanding actor or 
writer, no demagogue, hardly communing with his constituents 
but by the monosyllables of votes, always before them in print, 
but taking no undue means for soliciting their good will. Yet 
his popularity never failed, his success was transcendent, and the 
influence of his example is still enduring and increasing. The 
centralism of Hamilton has almost disappeared. The federal- 
ism of Washington and the constitutionalism of Madison have 
been, in a measure, superseded by the republicanism of Jeffer- 
son, which may be swallowed up in the radicalism of Macon. 
Will that be declining or advancing ? 

The most frequent disparagement cast by Europeans on 
American republicanism, is its alleged tendency to degenerate, 
a downward tendency, which is to swallow up learning, wealth, 
liberty, and refinement, and establish a despotism of mere vul- 
garity ; that public life is less sought by respectability than else- 
where or formerly, and that talents avoid it. Whether this be 
so in America, is it more so than elsewhere ? Great, talents are 
the creations of great conjunctures; and the tranquillity of the 
United States has been almost stagnant under the present forms 
of government. In such circumstances commercial, professional, 
and other lucrative pursuits, are more attractive than politics ; 
and with the growth of luxury, which has been prodigious 
since the introduction of paper money, there will always be a 
large class preferring fashionable idleness to political notoriety. 
Mme. de Stael says, in her considerations on the French Revo- 
lution, that many of the old nobility of Europe despised the 
Emperor Alexander as an upstart, not to be received into good 
society. Social and ancestral distinction, a strong desire, more 
prevalent in Europe, is not without acknowledgment in Ame- 
rica. Descendants of celebrated Americans are often chosen 
into political life for that reason. Congress and the state legisla- 
tures abound with members boasting some family merit, such 
as kindred with soldiers of the Revolution ; and it is common 
to meet with Americans who preserve their ancestors' certifi- 
cates of service in the revolutionary army, as if they were 



216 NATHANIEL MACON. [MAY, 1813. 

patents of nobility. Besides the merits of personal pedigree, 
Burke eloquently vindicates those of honourable national lineage. 
Yet the country attorneys, village lawyers, notaries, brokers, 
traders, and clowns whom he enumerates as the majority of the 
third estate of the French National Assembly, inferior, in his 
judgment, to the noblemen and gentry he extols as hereditary 
legislators, enacted laws which reformed the crumbling basis of 
society, and reconstructed France so as to render that declining 
kingdom not only freer, but incomparably happier, richer, and 
greater than it was before the days of what Burke calls its down- 
fall. If De Tocqueville's idea be true, that American democracy 
is irresistibly swallowing up everything else American, and 
such be the decline which Europe imputes to this country, at 
all events Great Britain, France, and all the freer kingdoms of 
Europe, are passing down the same declivity with more vio- 
lence and precipitation than this country, one of whose conso- 
lations is Jefferson's maxim, that government, at best, is but 
relative good, and that, with all the faults of which it is accused, 
democracy is at least a less injurious and more durable state 
than royalty, since one of the unquestionable consequences of 
the American Revolution is that revolutionary movements, with 
equality and liberty, have begun throughout the Old World. 
Be that as it may as to public bodies and national stability, 
Macon found public life not more precarious or unprofitable, 
and less toilsome or irksome than private pursuits; and if Ame- 
rican legislatures had more of such men, faithfully representing 
a sovereign people, public life would be reasonable support, and 
the most honourable occupation. For state legislatures and 
Congress, in most instances, are the mere chrysalis between 
worm and butterfly ; where insect members perish after a short 
flight. But such is not legitimate rotation in office, nor the public 
service Macon performed. With him a place in Congress was 
the ultimate, not penultimate or intermediate stage; the goal, not 
the stepping stone, to some more profitable place or speculation, 
but that to which he dedicated all the faculties of all his life. 

If there is romance of politics, or fancy in this sketch of an 
American political apostle, at least the experiment of both may 
not be unworthy of general consideration. We must endeavour 
to divest ourselves of the influences of Europe, and stand on Ame- 
rican independence, in order to appreciate such an experiment. 






CHAP. VII.] NATHANIEL MACON. 217 

Let it be borne in mind that in estimating what may be thought 
relapse to vulgar barbarism, or advance to true wisdom, accord- 
ing to the judgment or the prejudice of the reader, while Macon 
lived, such was the change, whether retrograde or progressive, 
that representative government, open legislation, religious tolera- 
tion, and political equality, were first introduced among mankind. 
The wisest, therefore, may misjudge, the wildest be too tame in 
theory. At all events, Macon's passive example has had pow- 
erful influences. The book of John Taylor, of Carolina, proves 
it even in literature. Doing nothing, saying little, what a space 
Macon fills ! Constructive and aristocratic excesses, as he calmly 
denounced them, banks, tariffs, taxes, rapid improvements, much 
government, armies, great expenditures, paper money, high pay, 
resisted by him, with a very few adherents, are now rejected by 
large portions of the American people. An executive Macon 
could hardly be; a Congress filled with them, especially in time 
of war, might not be practicable. Yet large infusion of his doc- 
trine already affects all our institutions, and may act still more 
thoroughly on American government, should America become 
a world by itself, entirely independent of European pupilage. 
Already have chief magistrates of the United States proclaimed 
much of Macon's principles as standards for their administration; 
at least one of them, Mr. Van Euren, visited his peculiar home- 
stead as a shrine to worship at ; and others may follow in his 
footsteps of peace, moderation, severe economy and radical 
democracy. The experiment has not yet been made how far 
liberty may be carried. Not only in the United States, but in 
England, too, the tendency is to go farther. What has not the 
free principle done for Great Britain, in spite of feudal fetters 
upon all her institutions! What has not equality done for 
France, almost without liberty ? Are not Russia, Turkey, Egypt, 
India, South America much freer than before Macon lived? 
The laws and intercourse of nations, the laws of commerce and 
trade of different parts of the same nation, the laws of religious 
worship, the modern philosophy of all politics, own that the 
world has been governed too much, and that a great trial is to 
be made of cheap self-government. 



vol. i. — 19 



218 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 



CHAPTER VI II. 

TAXES.— DIRECT TAX.— TAX ON REFINED SUGAR.— SALES AT AUCTION. 
—RETAILERS' LICENSES.— STAMPS.— CARRIAGES.— STILLS.— PRODUCE 
OF TAXES UNDER WASHINGTON'S, ADAMS', AND MADISON'S ADMIN- 
ISTRATION.— SELECTION OF COLLECTORS.— COST OF COLLECTION- 
REDUCTION OF TAXES AFTER WAR.— DALLAS'S SYSTEM.— MONROE'S 
ADMINISTRATION.— TAXES REPEALED.— CRAWFORD, SECRETARY OF 
TREASURY.— TABULAR STATEMENTS OF TAXATION.— DEBATE AND 
VOTES ON REPEAL OF SYSTEM OF INTERNAL REVENUE.— EFFECT 
ON IMPOST. — TARIFF OF DUTIES.— WAR LOANS.— PAPER MONEY.— 
AMERICAN AND ENGLISH NATIONAL DEBT AND CREDIT.— SUSPEN- 
SION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS BY BANKS.— EVILS OF IRRESPONSIBLE 
BANKING.— EFFECTS OF WAR ON RESOURCES OF UNITED STATES.— 
COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE.— SAMUEL HARRISON SMITH.— PRESI- 
DENT MADISON. 

The great need of the country,and business of Congress in 1813, 
were to provide money for war declared in a state of total un- 
preparedness. The only fiscal measures of the twelfth Congress 
were a loan of eleven millions of dollars, doubling the duties on 
importations, and authorizing five millions of treasury notes. 
War was declared the 18th of June, 1812, by that Congress ; and 
it was not till the 22d of July, 1813, that the thirteenth Congress 
passed the act for the assessment and collection of direct taxes 
and internal duties ; soon followed by acts imposing duties on 
refined sugar, sales at auction, retailers' licenses, stamps, carriages 
for conveyance of persons, licenses to distillers of spirituous 
liquors, and a direct tax of three millions of dollars a year. On 
the 24th July, the office of Commissioner of the Revenue was 
established. By these laws, sugar refined within the United 
States, was to pay four cents per pound, subject to drawback on 
importation ; sales at auction, one per cent, on goods, and one 
quarter per cent, on ships or vessels, payable by the auctioneer 
on obtaining a license, subject to deduction of one per cent, on 
the amount of duties, for his trouble ; licenses to retailers of 
wines, spirituous liquors, and foreign merchandize for one year, 
as follows : viz. retailers of merchandize, including wines and 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 219 



spirits, if in cities, towns, or villages, containing within the limits 
of one mile square more than one hundred families, twenty-five 
dollars; of wines alone, twenty dollars ; of spirits alone, twenty 
dollars ; of domestic spirits alone, fifteen dollars ; of merchandize, 
other than wines and spirits, fifteen dollars ; retailers, if in any 
other place than before stated, for merchandize, including wines 
and spirits, fifteen dollars; wines and spirits, fifteen dollars; 
spirits alone, twelve dollars ; domestic spirits, ten dollars ; mer- 
chandize, other than wine and spirits, ten dollars ; on notes of 
banks or bankers, an average of one per cent., subject to annual 
composition, in lieu thereof of one and a half per cent, on the 
amount of their annual dividend; on any bond, obligation or 
promissory note, discounted by any bank, company, or banker, 
and on any foreign or inland bill of exchange, graduated duties 
on their several amounts, varying from about a fifteen-hundredth 
to a two-thousandth part thereof. These duties were collected 
through the medium of stamps sold by the collectors, deducting 
seven and a half per cent, to purchasers, to the amount of ten 
dollars or more ; on carriages for conveyance of persons, every 
coach, twenty dollars; chariot and post-chaise, fourteen dollars; 
phceton, and coachee with panel work, ten dollars ; other four 
wheel carriages, hanging on steel or iron springs, seven dollars ; 
every four-wheel carriage, hanging on wooden springs, and two 
wheel carriage hanging on steel or iron springs, four dollars ; 
licenses to distillers of spirituous licpjors from domestic materials, 
for employment of a still for two weeks, nine cents per gallon of 
its capacity, for one month, eighteen cents, for two months, 
thirty-two cents, for three months, forty cents, for four months, 
fifty-two cents, for six months, seventy cents, for a year, one 
hundred and eight cents ; one half only of these sums to be paid 
on stills employed wholly in the distillation of roots ; for em- 
ployment of a still on foreign materials, twenty-five cents per 
gallon a month, sixty cents for three months, one hundred and 
five cents for six months, one hundred and thirty-five cents a 
year ; for every boiler double the amount of these sums ; these 
duties not exceeding five dollars, to be paid in cash, more than 
five dollars to be bonded with one or more sureties for payment 
four months after expiration of the license. The acts relative 
to direct taxes laid them agreeably to the assessed value of 
the lands, dwelling-houses, improvements and slaves, dividing 



220 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

the United States into one hundred and ninety-nine collection 
districts, with one principal collector and one principal assessor 
for each, to appoint as many assistants as either saw fit. The 
principal assessor received two dollars for every day employed 
in hearing appeals and making out lists, and four dollars for 
every hundred taxable persons, the assistant-assessor one dol- 
lar and fifty cents for every day employed in collecting lists, 
and making collections, and three dollars for every hundred 
taxable persons. The principal collector received on direct 
taxes eight per cent, when the quota of his district did not ex- 
ceed ten thousand dollars, seven per cent, when between ten and 
fifteen thousand, six per cent, when between fifteen and twenty 
thousand, five per cent, when between twenty and thirty thou- 
sand, four per cent, when between thirty and fifty thousand, 
three per cent, when above fifty thousand; for collecting internal 
duties the commission was six per cent.; but no collector was 
allowed more than four thousand dollars a year ; twenty-five 
thousand dollars were alloted for collectors whose emoluments 
did not exceed one thousand dollars a year ; the collectors paid 
their deputies out of their emoluments, but were allowed for 
measuring stills, and for books, stationary, printed forms, certifi- 
cates and other documents; six months allowed for collections, but 
states were allowed deduction of fifteen per cent, for advancing 
their proportions. Without explanation now of the extraordinary 
causes and circumstances of it, I add by anticipation as a fact in 
this connection, that on the 9th of January, IS 1.5, the direct tax 
was increased from three to six millions, and on the 5th March, 
1816, it was imposed for the last time for that war to the amount 
of three millions. The duties on carriages were also changed in 
January, 1815, from specific to ad valorem, occasionally by a radi- 
cal mistake of the first law in graduating the scale of duties, which 
caused deficiency in the revenue. It was an error of the latter 
law to put the lowest rate at one dollar instead of two ; also in 
taking the actual instead of the original cost of the carriage. On 
the 21st December, 1814, the duties on stills were considerably in- 
creased ; on the 23d December of that year, fifty per cent, was 
added to the duties on licenses to retailers of wines, spirituous 
liquors and fqreign merchandize, and one hundred per cent, to 
the duties on auctions. On the 15th January, 1815, a duty of one 
dollar a ton was laid on pig iron, one dollar and fifty cents on 
castings, one dollar on bar iron, and rolled or split iron, one cent 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 221 

a pound on nails, brads and sprigs, other than those usually 
denominated wrought, five cents a pound on candles of white 
wax or in part of white and other wax, three cents a pound on 
mould candies, or tallow, or wax not white, or in part of each, 
eight per cent, ad valorem on hats and caps, in whole or part 
of leather, wool, or fur, and bonnets in whole or part of wool or 
fur, if above two dollars in value, eight per cent, ad valorem on 
umbrellas and parasols, if above the value of two dollars, on 
paper, three per cent, ad valorem, fifty per cent, ad valorem on 
playing and visiting cards, six per cent, ad valorem on saddles 
and bridles, five per cent, ad valorem on boots and bootees ex- 
ceeding five dollars a pair in value, six per cent, ad valorem on 
beer, ale, and porter, twenty per cent, ad valorem on tobacco, 
manufactured cigars and snuff, five per cent, ad valorem on 
leather, including all kinds and skins, whether tanned, tawed, 
dressed, or otherwise made, on the original manufacture ; these 
duties, payable by the owner or occupier of the building or vessel 
in which, or of the machine, implements or utensils where- 
with the articles were manufactured, or by the agent or repre- 
sentative thereof; bonds given for a regular accountability upon 
license to employ the building, &c, for a term not exceeding a 
year. On the 18th January, 1815, duties were laid of two 
dollars on every gold watch, and one dollar on every silver 
watch in use per annum ; on household furniture used, except 
beds, bedding, kitchen furniture, family pictures, and articles 
made in the family from domestic materials, not exceeding two 
hundred dollars, whose value did not exceed four hundred dollars, 
one dollar, and graduated up to exceeding seven thousand dollars 
when the maximum tax was one hundred dollars. On the 27th 
February, 1815, a duty was laid of six per cent, ad valorem, on all 
gold, silver and plated ware, jewelry and pastework, except time 
pieces manufactured within the United States. These additions 
of 1S14 and 1815 were made after Dallas's accession to the 
treasury, on the retirement of Campbell in October, 1814, as 
will be circumstantially noticed at that time. The last one took 
place after peace, tidings of which reached Washington the 15th 
February, 1815, one of the last acts of the thirteenth Congress, 
on the 3d March 1815, intended to fix the compensations of col- 
lectors, and increase their responsibility, as suggested by the com- 

19* 



222 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

missioner of the revenue ; requiring each collector, under penal- 
ties, varying from four hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars, 
within ninety days from the end of every year, to draw out state- 
ments exhibiting alphabetically the names of all persons having 
paid any internal duties during the preceding year, with their 
aggregate amount annexed to each name, and forthwith cause 
one bunded copies thereof to be printed, transmit one of them to 
the Commissioner of the Revenue, lodge one with the principal 
assessor, one with the clerk of each town, county and district 
within his collection district, post up one copy at each of the 
court-houses in his district, and the other copies at the remaining 
public places therein. This check on abuse was suggested to 
correct, the extreme liability to abuse, to which the laws as enact- 
ed were liable ; and being faithfully complied with, produced, 
perfect accountability as to the sums collected, removing one of 
the greatest objections to a system of internal taxation. Such 
publicity in the collection of impost by the United States, and of 
taxes by the States, might have similar benefits. But is it not 
severe and odious policy thus to expose every one's property to 
common animadversion, envy and misrepresentation? It cer- 
tainly would be an important item of statistics ; exposing, how- 
ever, the property of the rich to the poor, and the want of it by 
the poor to the rich, so as to foment the feeling always sufficiently 
acrid of the one class to the other. 

Taxation is difficult and detestable, requiring war to introduce 
it, and itself a kind of war on the community, especially in- 
tolerable where the sovereignty is popular, and frequent elec- 
tions render representatives fearful of burthening a formidable 
constituency, who are, however, mostly more willing to be taxed 
than their representative to vote taxes. The first American Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, Hamilton, by whom it was organized, 
a bold and enterprising genius, yet reverencing and imitating 
English government, disturbed the outset and popularity of 
Washington's administration, by English excises imposed on a 
poor, sparse, and licentious population. Though Johnson argued 
against America, that taxation was no tyranny, yet he defined 
excises in England, as hateful- taxes levied on commodities, and 
adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches 
hired by those to whom excise is paid. Mr. Gallatin, Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, when war was declared, was opposed 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 223 

to it, deprecating a trial of strength, which he did not believe 
American institutions would bear. He was the Secretary of the 
Treasury in Jefferson's administration, when all the external 
revenues were abolished ; and like Jefferson and Franklin, pro- 
bably considered any peace preferable to any war. In 1813, 
when war taxes came to be enacted, he was gone on the mission 
which was to begin at Gottenburg, and ended at Ghent, to put 
an end to hostilities under the mediation of Russia. Recrimi- 
nations between the committee of Ways and Means, of the 
House of Representatives of the twelfth Congress, and the execu- 
tive, censure and excuse each other for the lapse of a whole year, 
from the beginning of war before taxes took place, when the 
Secretary of the Treasury was absent on a foreign mission. The 
commissioner of the revenue was not appointed till after the 
tax bills became laws, on whom devolved the duties of esta- 
blishing, and beginning the collection, including the selection and. 
appointment of nearly two hundred collectors, and as many prin- 
cipal assessors. Owing to such causes, the system of taxation 
was not as well devised as it should have been, being little more 
than that attempted at the outset of the American government, 
which lingered on till Jefferson repealed the whole. The duties 
repealed and revived, embraced domestic spirits, snuff, refined 
sugar, retailers of wines and spirituous liquors, sales at auction, 
carriages and stamps, imposed between the years 1791 and 1798, 
and repealed in 1802. Their entire duration then was eleven years, 
and the average of the whole about eight. The whole amount 
of proceeds realized by them from payments into the treasury, 
up to the year 1812 inclusive, was six millions, four hundred and 
sixty thousand dollars, yielding an average revenue of about six 
hundred thousand dollars a year, for the eight years, during which 
they might be considered in full operation. Their net yield for the 
year 1800 did not exceed eight hundred thousand dollars. Their 
collection cost about twenty percent. These facts seemed to jus- 
tify repealing the whole in 1802, when the impost income was 
upwards of sixteen millions of dollars, collected for about five per 
cent. The expenses of collection of the revenue from customs, 
on the average of ten years, from 1791 to 1S00, both included, 
was 3.79 percent ; on the ten years, from 1801 to 1810 inclusive, 
the average was 4.19 per cent ; the average of the twenty years 
from 1791 to 1810 inclusive, 4.04 per cent. Although the taxes 



224 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

of 1813 began under unpropitious circumstances, their operation 
was favourable, compared with that of taxes in any other coun- 
try, and particularly with this, from 1791 to 1800. With popu- 
lation scarcely doubled, the taxation was three millions a year, 
instead of six hundred thousand ; more than six times as much 
as the first year, and considerably increased afterwards, showing 
great improvement in the wealth of the country, as also in the 
administration of the system of internal revenue. The entire 
duration of the taxes of IS 13 was four years; their average dura- 
tion about three. Their entire net yield to the treasury was 
about sixteen millions of dollars, averaging about five millions, 
three hundred thousand dollars a year. If all the duties as laid 
iri 1S13 had been continued in operation, they would have yielded 
about eight millions of dollars a year in 1816, and about twenty 
millions a year by 1840. 

The principal causes of the administrative success of the sys- 
tem of 1813, were, first, the direct responsibility of all the offi- 
cers (excepting deputy collectors) to the treasury; secondly, a 
judicious and careful selection of those officers, many, perhaps 
most of them, influenced more by zeal for the country and the 
war, than by hope of gain, not being selected from hackneyed 
office hunters; thirdly, their moderate compensation ; experience 
proving that official duties of an administrative character are 
most faithfully performed by those moderately paid for them. — 
Moderate salaries satisfy men taken from middle classes, whose 
numbers admit of good selections, from working men used to in- 
dustrious pursuits, not apt to be led astray by allurements of plea- 
sure, or ambition. Fourthly, the publicity required, obliging the 
annual collection, in each collection district, of the amount 
received from every individual paying a tax; lastly, the practice 
of the commissioner, of not merely answering specific inquiries 
from his subordinates on doubtful points, but issuing and dissemi- 
nating frequent printed circulars, tending to establish a uniform 
and improving system throughout the whole country. 

To its honour it may be averred that never were taxes, espe- 
cially new ones, more promptly or cheerfully paid : nearly the 
whole amount accruing within the four years being paid within 
that period, when the currency was deranged, without national 
bank, or other general regulation, and what was called money, 
little more than state bank notes, most of which, during the latter 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 225 

part of the war, were not convertible into coin, but mere promises 
to pay. The cost of collection never exceeded six per cent. 

The war ceasing early in 1815, it became a question whether 
direct taxes and internal duties should be abolished or reduced. 
That war cost a national debt of about eighty millions of dollars, 
which, added to prior debt, made more than one hundred and 
twenty millions. The income of 1815, from customs, was thirty- 
six millions of dollars; and there was no doubt of revenue enough 
from that source, to discharge the current expenses of govern- 
ment, and pay the interest, gradually reducing the principal of 
the public debt. The internal taxes of IS 13, and subsequently, 
were mostly at first limited in their duration to one year after the 
termination of the war, but afterwards pledged for payment of 
the public debt of the war, until Congress provided an adequate 
substitute. As the productiveness of the customs removed all 
difficulty in this respect, the Secretary of the Treasury, Dallas, in 
an elaborate report in December, 1815, recommended reducing 
the direct tax, from six to three millions, the reduction of some, 
and abolition of other duties ; but that the duties on stamps and 
refined sugars should be rendered permanent, which was accord- 
ingly done by act of Congress of 1st of February, 1816. An act 
was passed the 22d February, 1816, abolishing duties on articles 
manufactured in the United States, which, having been taxed by 
act of the ISth April, 1S15, were subject to taxation for only nine 
months. On the 5th of March, 1816, the annual direct tax of six 
millions was repealed, and a direct tax of three millions laid for 
that year. On the 9th April, 1S16, the taxes on watches and 
on household furniture were repealed. On the 19th April, 1816, 
the duties per gallon on spirits were abolished, and the existing 
duties modified after the 30th June following. Corresponding 
with these reductions, the compensation of collectors by act' of 
the 27th April, 1816, was fixed at six per cent, per annum, on all 
moneys not exceeding $40,000 paid into the treasury, three per 
cent, on all between forty and one hundred thousand, and two 
per cent, on all above one hundred thousand, provided that no 
collector should receive more than $5,000 a year. 

The secretary suggested that the establishment of a revenue 
system not exclusively dependent on foreign commerce, claimed 
particular attention. The almost entire failure of the customs in 



226 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

war, and increasing necessities of the treasury, rendered it neces- 
sary to seek for supplies in internal duties, in respect to subjects, 
and amount of which peace had always 'been looked to for revi- 
sion and relief. Pursuant to that policy, inconvenient and unpro- 
ductive taxes were repealed, above all, domestic manufactures 
were exonerated from whatever might retard their progress. — 
But there still remained sufficient scope for the operation of a 
permanent system of internal duties upon principles of national 
policy which he had suggested. Had this suggestion been adopted 
by Congress, there would have been after the year 1816, a net 
annual revenue of seven millions of dollars, derived from internal 
duties, and increasing with the growth of the country. The com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, on the 9th January, 1816, by their 
chairman, William Lowndes, reported that it was indispensable in 
any arrangement of revenue, and expenditure in peace, to provide 
for the rapid extinguishment of the public debt. To no one is 
the Union more indebted than to William Lowndes, for this most 
desirable and honourable consummation. To attain it, his report 
proceeded, a considerable revenue will be requisite. In selecting 
the taxes to compose it, the duties upon imported articles might 
furnish the principal supply. Cheap and easy in their collection, 
paid like all indirect taxes when convenient to pay them, under 
a system of prudent moderation, they would discourage no branch 
of national industry. Duties on importation or exportation, seem 
to be the natural resource of thinly peopled countries, which, ex- 
porting a large amount of their agricultural productions, receive 
in return the manufactures of other states, distance rendering 
evasion of payment more difficult than among adjoining countries. 
But as agriculture finds markets at home, and wealth spreads 
over inland countries, imports and exports must bear a con- 
stantly lessening proportion to the wealth of the nation. Even 
while the principal reliance is impost, it could not be so increased 
as to provide for extinguishment of the debt, and for necessary 
expenditures, without danger of illicit trade : moreover, the objec- 
tions to entire reliance on importations had been too fully shown 
by recent experience, to recommend them as constituting the 
whole income of the country. Their liberal provision in peace 
disappears, when war requires larger contributions ; when gov- 
ernment is left to explore new systems of taxation, to discover 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 227 

and draw into public service men capable of filling the different 
departments of revenue, reduced to a condition in which zeal, 
bravery and resource can but imperfectly produce their natural 
effects. The committee of Ways and Means, therefore, con- 
curred fully with the Secretary of the Treasury, in approving 
the establishment of a revenue system, not entirely dependent on 
the supplies of foreign commerce. 

Soon after that session of Congress the administration of Ma- 
dison ceased by his voluntary retirement, and James Monroe 
was elected president. In his first annual message, Decem- 
ber, 1S17, estimating the customs for the next year at twenty 
millions, internal revenue at two millions and a half, pub- 
lic lands at one million and a half, bank dividends and other 
incidental receipts at half a million, altogether twenty-four 
millions and a half, he considered it his duty to recommend 
the repeal of the internal duties ; it appearing in a satisfac- 
tory manner, said the message, that the revenue arising from 
imposts and tonnage, and from the sale of the public lands 
would be fully adequate to the support of the civil govern- 
ment, of the present military and naval establishments, includ- 
ing the annual augmentation of the latter to the extent pro- 
vided for, to the payment of the interest on the public debt, 
and extinguishment of it at the times authorized, without the 
aid of the internal taxes. To impose taxes when the public 
exigencies require them, the president pronounced an obligation 
of the most sacred character, especially with a free people. The 
faithful fulfilment of it is among the highest proofs of their virtue 
and capacity for self-government. To dispense with taxes when 
it may be done with perfect safety, is equally the duty of their 
representatives. In this instance we have the satisfaction to know, 
lie said, that they were imposed when the demand was imperi- 
ous, and have been sustained with exemplary fidelity. However 
gratifying it may be, regarding the prosperous and happy condi- 
tion of our country, to recommend the repeal of these taxes at 
this time, the president added that he should nevertheless be 
attentive to events, and should any future emergency occur, be 
not less prompt to suggest such measures and burthens as might 
be requisite and proper. On the 8th December, 1S17, the Se- 
cretary of the Treasury, Crawford, estimated the annual income 



228 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

for 1818 at twenty-four millions and a half, and the expenditure 
at not quite twenty-two millions, leaving something more than 
two millions and a half surplus. Next day the committee 
of Ways and Means recommended repealing all the internal 
duties. William Lowndes, chairman of that committee and 
reporting its opinion, as before mentioned, during the preceding 
Congress, was again chairman of it at this time. The report of 
the committee gives the amount accrued to government on 
account of internal duties, exclusive of the direct tax, from the 
1st January, 1814, to the 31st December, 1S17, at -more than 
seventeen millions, and the receipts for the same time at upwards 
of fifteen millions, as follows: 1814, accrued, $3,262,197 12, 
received, $1,910,995 01; 1815, accrued, $6,242,503 55, received, 
$4,976,529 86; 1816, accrued, $4,633,799 34, received, $5,281,- 
121 98; 1817, accrued, $3,002,000 00, received, $3,000,000 00. 
Expenses of collection, in 1S14, $148,991 78; in 1815, $279,277 
67; in 1816, $253,440 42 ; in 1817, $180,000 00— that is, 7 T V 
per cent, in 1814 ; 5~ per cent, in 1815; 4 T \ per cent, in 1S16 ; 
and 6 per cent, in 1817. 

In their report, the committee, stating that the charges of col- 
lection on internal duties have been higher than on imposts, 
declared that the latter had been very different at different times. 
Mr. Gallatin, in 1810, estimated them at something less than six 
per cent, on moneys collected from the people. Mr. Dallas sup- 
posed them, including fees, to be about five per cent., and still 
lower in the last three years. The difference between the 
expense of collecting internal and foreign duties will not appear 
extraordinary, when we remember how few are the domestic 
products subject to duty, and of foreign exempt from it ; how 
long and regularly the impost has been acquiring maturity, and 
improvement ; how frequent the changes and short the duration 
of the system of internal revenue. In abandoning that portion 
of the taxes considered most inconvenient, neither Congress nor 
the nation would form so exaggerated a notion of these incon- 
veniences as to deter them from again applying to the same 
resource when the necessities of the state shall require. It is the 
duty of Congress to provide revenue from such resources as shall 
not permit the fate of war and the most important interests of 
the nation to depend on precarious and often extravagant loans. 
The committee concluded that on all future emergencies, the 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES. 229 

people will be disposed to pay internal taxes and the House of 
Representatives to impose them on a scale suited to the occasion. 

On the 23d December, 1817, Congress repealed the duties after 
the 31st of that month, on licenses to distillers, refined sugars, 
licenses to retailers, sales at auction, carriages and stamps ; and 
promoted their collection by further allowances to collectors. 
These duties were in force on refined sugars, sales at auction, 
carriages, licenses to retailers and to distillers, and on stamps, 
four years ; on spirits by the gallon, one year and five months ; 
on manufactures about nine months ; on watches and household 
furniture, one year. 

The annexed tables exhibit many curious and instructive sta- 
tistical details, for which I am indebted to Mr. Smith, the com- 
missioner of revenue. From them may be selected the following 
important results. From 1814 to 18 IS inclusive, the tax on stills 
from domestic materials produced nearly $4,000,000, and from 
foreign materials not quite $400,000; on spirits, from domestic 
materials, upwards of $3,000,000, and from foreign materials 
about $218,000 ; on carriages more than $650,000; on licenses 
to retailers, more than $3,000,000; on sales at auction near 
$2,400,000; on stamps, $1,500,000 ; on bank notes by compo- 
sition, upwards of $400,000 ; on household furniture, about 
$50,000; on watches, $175,000 ; on refined sugar, $392,000; 
on manufactures, $991,000. Of the direct tax, when $3,000,000 
per annum, the several States paid, New Hampshire, $97,060 ; 
Vermont, $98,000; Massachusetts, $318,000; Rhode Island, 
$34,000; Connecticut, $118,000; New York, $435,000; New 
Jersey, $108,000; Pennsylvania, $365,000; Delaware, $32,000; 
Maryland, $152,000; Virginia, $369,000 ; North Carolina, $220,- 
000; South Carolina, $151,000; Georgia, $94,000; Kentucky, 
$168,009 ; Tennessee, $111,000; Ohio, $104,000, and Louisiana, 
$31,000. These sums are given without the fractions, which in 
every instance somewhat increase the amount. The total was, 
in 1813, something more than $3,000,000, and in 1815 above 
$6,000,000. In 1816 it was again $3,000,000. According to the 
acts of Congress, any state paying its contingent into the trea- 
sury at designated times, was entitled to a deduction of fifteen per 
cent., which South Carolina and Ohio received each of the three 
years by advancing their respective quotas, New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Virginia and Kentucky in 1813, and New York in 
vol. i.— 20 



230 TAXES. [JULY, 1813. 

1815. Georgia was allowed ten per cent, in 1815. There were 
errors of assessment allowed $26,2S4 17, and persons insolvent, 
$17,225 43. The whole direct tax for three years exceeded 
$12,000,000 ; of which states advanced more than $3,700,000, 
leaving upwards of $S,300,000 to be collected. Individuals paid 
these taxes without delay or hesitation, to the amount of near 
$8,000,000, leaving but about $400,000 in arrear, of which a 
large portion consisted of taxes on lands purchased by the United 
States in consequence of not selling for the amount of taxes, and 
of small taxes which did not equal the extraordinary expenses 
of sale. More than $10,700,000 were paid into the treasury in 
1813, '14, '15, '16, '17 and 18, and from 1818 to 1830, about 
$210,000. The deductions for the advancing states exceeded 
$532,000. The expenses of collection exceeded $473,000. And 
the loss by non-payments fell short of $100,000. The expenses 
of collection were about $76,000 in 1814, about $51,000 in 1815, 
about $201,000 in 1816, about $125,000 in 1817, and about $21,- 
000 in 1818; altogether $473,116 34: which on $7,932,864 29 
collected by collectors in those years, is about six per cent. 

In some later treasury statements, especially that of 17th June, 
1831, pursuant to a call of the House of Representatives of 
29th May, 1830, the duties derived from spirits are erroneously 
charged to licenses for stills, and the deductions from the direct 
tax for prompt payments, are not only included in the expenses 
of collection, but charged as compensation paid to collectors. 
The collectors had nothing to do with those payments by the 
states. Such mistakes,, therefore, lead to extremely erroneous 
conclusions as to the cost of collections. 



CHAP. VIII.] 



TAX TABLES. 



231 



«3 

55 



< 



S 



^ 





00 

S3 


e-2 
bog 








E2 

C fi 


19 80 
107 19 

5 22 

445 97 

671 20 

3,190 43 

12 23 

1,250 77 

773 117 

1,0.8s 00 

2,220 31 

594 39 

386 43 

739 80 
7 20 

269 OS 


qo 

Ci 
55^ 




CO 


g 5 

^ a 


3,292 88 

74,147 43 

14,071 18 
4,853 .-7 

22,589 75 

3,263 09 

819 43 

125 38 
1,118 52 

340 00 
190 65 

19 80 


JO 

oa 

CI 




"ml 

Is 

fig 


318 oo 

9,058 98 

2.892 41 i 

3,340 72 

23.941 18 

43.475 37 

12 330 82 

170.018 33 

2 916 92 

27,322 13 

94 503 51 

50 ^22 12 

73,013 70 

101,1-4 19 

15 207 92 

54.931 29 

9.707 98 

15,283 -9 

1,024 78 

2.849 56 
1.332 66 
2 204 22 


03 
i~ 

Q 

-f 

Oj' 
CI 




o 

00 
rH 




1.935 02 
74,681 01 

10.433 45 
5,538 91 

22,123 49 

2,451 16 

699 35 

4,407 32 
1,720 S3 


o 

C3 

a> 

co~ 

01 




o ri 

ft s 


I 1- 32 

7,801 92 

4.934 68 

1,762 02 

25,079 72 

77,313 22 

39,462 12 

256,409 57 

3,397 35 

35,214 29 

111,137 31 

24,256 28 

63,588 41 

84.175 84 

12.908 40 

49,057 02 

16,717 85 

10,138 02 

367 43 

764 00 
1,125 17 
1,083 73 


1^ 

CO 

-V 

CI 

00 




00 


B.2 

to s 

* S 


3,015 90 
57,959 11 

8,440 80 
3,524 05 
10.299 23 
4,953 90 

2,550 77 
864 00 


co 

CO 
00 

o 
co^ 

a 




11 


Ci CO OOOCOClCOwt^COWOCJ^r-CCOJ^ oxx> 
O 05 CJ CO O t^ — 1 w X CO X ^H O X t^ lO t- Ci CiC^ 

7 — CO CO 1^ 0) CO 0) C". = CI CO C". I- lO >* O OS ■* S3 — / 
/ X: ■- (~ ■- 71 TO — C: — = i.O — c C: — — 01 C: — I CI ~ kj 
X CO CI O 7. O O O 01 CO i^ CO /- UOCIOH5) w^j, 

w^-jdco i? )'- i-^ co co' i>-' ci ^^t"o" t* 

CJ rH LO CI CI CI CIJDrtC3«3rHP3H 


01 
CJ 

o 

00 




00 

a 


fcOCi 

fog 


213 90 
39,272 28 

9,346 50 

6,201 45 

56 70 

3 50 

1,425 00 

925 00 


CO 
CO 

i 

l-T 




O to 
B o 

P a 


3,982 50 

33,735 64 

31., -36 54 

6,918 7:i 

50.067 34 

225.979 31 

54,845 67 

392,536 23 

4.457 64 

60,378 10 

264,135 97 

87,73- 22 

75 590 B5 

141,157 50 

66.941 37 

77.091 59 

29.262 34 

7,741 84 

605 35 

2,358 50 
2.033 95 

1,862 11 

279 27 


SB 

CJ 

■a 

CI 

CO 






New Hampshire 

Massachusetts 

Vermont 

Rhode Island 

Connecticut 

New York 

New Jersey 

Pennsylvania 

Delaware 

Maryland 

Virginia 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Kentucky 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Georgia 

Louisiana 

Illinois Territory 

Michigan " 

Indiana " 

Missouri " 

Mississippi " 

District of Columbia 


o 



232 



TAX TABLES. 



[JULY, 1813. 



13 



t§ 






^ 



^3 



3 



3 





CD 

CO 


sets 

I- 0) 

E 


£ ca 

O 60 

O u 
O) 0) 

- o, 

< 


133 70 


o 
i^ 

CO 
CO 




CO 


H 

CJ 

CS 

E 

i 

o 

p 


«"5 

« bo 

CO I. 

— c 

< 


2 50 

1,451 37 

41 94 
14 25 

116 37 
754 41 

291 70 

862 55 


IO 

CO 
IO 

co- 




E_; 
cj bo 
o >-. 
O) » 

— a. 


31 40 
130 GO 

7 80 

29 40 

14 20 

4,891 20 

299 20 

849 49 
1,530 91 

58 80 


co 
o 

CO 

■a" 

.JO 




a 


bo"3 


d_: 

d> Cfl 

u bo 
c ■- 
o> a 
- P. 
«4 


1,805 18 
41,277 01 

4.018 04 

976 60 

7 047 02 

1.075 20 

408 GO 

413 56 

1,461 00 
530 00 


CI 
Ol 

o 
oT 

U7> 




[3 

"w 

E 

s 


O bo 
<0! 5 


105 95 
499 40 
313 99 

530 54 

6.716 03 

5,898 00 

28.514 17 

156 62 

4.967 05 

48,223 93 

61,163 20 

18,838 91 

24,703 57 

21,588 64 

29,360 37 

5,959 45 

92 11 

566 96 

2,544 87 

493 97 

1 407 14 


os 
a 
of 
eg 

CJ 




« "3 
f bo 

o ■_ 


334 71 
11.962 62 
5.297 79 
2.9al 85 
16.596 94 
77,437 92 
24,030 14 
271911 62 

41.294 68 

111.952 59 

10.710 53 

34.274 30 

80,549 71 

4 486 96 

24.391 62 

6.038 22 

5,585 60 

662 85 

1,838 35 

306 00 


o 
Si 

CO 

oi 

8 




in 

CO 


d-2 

bocS 

s s 


At 20 cents 
per gal. 


4,840 81 
110 147 27 

12,185 97 
5.645 20 

15 519 05 
5,477 20 

3,391 30 
2,021 60 


o 
o 

o 

O) 
CJ 

ci' 

iO 

IO 

CO 

o 

CO 

ef 
t- 




s 

E 

E 

o 

A 


V si 
O bo 

O) 4) 

« a 


137 05 

1,543 14 

810 14 

3.692 09 

5,672 31 

10,329 74 

38,393 24 

22 295 38 

32,428 34 

201 566 82 

175 922 07 

15128 83 

39,569 10 

68.107 41 

56 573 59 

65,162 75 

177 35 

701 2G 

2.503 17 

622 69 

1,045 90 




« bo 

o •_ 

Ot o 


661 81 

29,677 84 

18.017 56 

6,097 71 

52 996 04 

199,645 92 

69,081 42 

381,484 71 

GOO 35 

66,177 25 

179.387 95 

21.961 11 

56.653 68 

114.644 40 

19,640 77 

55.2-4 66 

17 563 00 

12.756 54 

549 23 

641 50 
833 50 
5s3 37 


CS 
CO 

o 

CO 

urf 
s 

co_ 




O H 

■< PS 
tft a 


New Hampshire 

Massachusetts 

Vermont 

Rhode Island 

Connecticut 

New York 

New Jersey 

Pennsvlvauia 

De 1 a ware 

Maryland 

Virginia 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Kentucky 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Georgia 

Louisiana 

Illinois Territory 

Michigan " 

Indiana " 

Missouri " 

Mississippi " 

District of Columbia 


o 



CHAP. VIII.] 



TAX TABLES. 



233 



fee 



a 






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00 

CD 


3 
P 


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grtr-KU^ZrHPS^^Ot^aE-OMSSr-^^a 





20* 



234 TAX TABLES. [JULY, 1813. 

Internal Duties which accrued on Licenses to Retailers. 



STATES OR TERRI- 




















TORIES. 


In 1814. 


1815. 




1816. 




1817. 




1818. 


New Hampshire 


18,449 


00 


24,535 


64 


20,316 


53 


15,473 


03 


292 96 


Massachusetts 


86,211 


12 


113,906 


95 


107,507 


92 


81,134 


71 


2,042 55 


Vermont 


14,417 


00 


22,337 


54 


16,519 


•J 7 


12,888 


43 


103 59 


Rhode Island 


16,058 


00 


10,093 


53 


11,408 


78 


13,311 


S7 


76 64 


Connecticut 


32,820 


26 


42,616 


04 


36,104 


29 


24,918 


40 


24 93 


New York 


174,748 


70 


201,757 


84 173,192 


37 


128,522 


49 


430 16 


New Jersey 


29,701 


00 


35,607 


87 


32,611 


75 


20,S77 


85 


136 91 


Pennsylvania 


160,939 


21 


153,018 


84, 139,035 


73 


101,732 


44 


629 99 


Delaware 


10,102 


88 


8,093 


12 


10,863 


56 


4,978 


95 




Maryland 


49,256 


20 


58,747 


36 


50,348 


09 


37,923 


91 


45 


Virginia 


52,038 


68 


69,620 


64 


58,603 


16 


47,961 


82 


198 81 


North Carolina 


23,985 


00 


32,967 


!)S 


28,221 


S3 


21,121 


17 


116 27 


Ohio 


20,574 


00 


26,923 


23 


23,394 


59 


21,213 


17 


228 77 


Kentucky 


19,255 


00 


23,789 


71 


20,141 


62 


19,757 


S4 


403 21 


South Carolina 


26,599 


00 


28,142 


91 


25,316 


11 


21,757 


19 


144 14 


Tennessee 


10,462 


00 


13,280 


54 


9,499 


92 


9,506 


00 




Georgia 


13,908 


00 


24,454 


33 


14,039 


49 


16,450 


38 


142 46 


Louisiana 


7,497 


00 


9,773 


09 


11,821 


•J 7 


8,99S 


i:> 


50 00 


Illinois Territory 


1,115 


00 


1,248 


so 


776 


95 


1,090 


00 


115 00 


Michigan " 


1,405 


00 


1,817 


10 


1,694 


13 


2,150 


00 




Indiana " 


2,191 


00 


3,139 


59 


1,860 


00 


1,920 


00 




Missouri " 


1,540 


00 


1,861 


46 


1,981 


75 


1,383 


75 




Mississippi " 


3,692 


00 


4,837 


74 


5,499 


42 


4,940 


25 


200 00 


District of Columbia 


10,140 


00 


14,872 


&2 


11,888 


64 


10,113 


48 


1 




786,005 


11 


927,444 


47 


S 12,647 


17 


630,126 


SI 


j 5,336 S4 



Internal Duties which accrued 


on Sales at Auction 




STATES OR TERRI- 












TORIES. 


In 1814. 


1815. 


1816. 


1817. 


1818. 


New Hampshire 


776 07 


2,245 79 


1,283 93 


808 96 




Massachusetts 


35,359 04 


87,643 63 


95,708 94 


58,704 30 


14,298 09 


Vermont 


14 25 


75 20 


106 42 


69 35 




Rhode Island 


6,274 82 


452 01 


2,640 44 


4,497 26 


651 62 


Connecticut 


283 89 


635 55 


322 67 


394 82 


24 74 


New York 


48,480 35 


332,841 64 


300,510 99 


234,053 26 


1,158 73 


New Jersey 


3,3S4 32 


949 84 


448 58 


66 46 




Pennsylvania 


34,630 74 


229,764 45 


160,493 43 


152,895 22 


23,509 59 


Delaware 


116 25 


453 82 


61 73 


61 50 




Maryland 


9,623 15 


102,758 79 


69,407 84 


52,834 38 




Virginia 


4,079 37 


20,003 64 


20,996 12 


28,475 38 


8,758 39 


North Carolina 


1,237 62 


3,734 47 


4,844 26 


2,913 73 


49 12 


Ohio 


549 31 


636 22 


1,014 90 


2,363 93 


922 86 


Kentucky 


270 92 


1,371 29 


813 53 


1,600 56 


1,370 77 


South Carolina 


2,631 39 


18,401 94 


30,203 26 


20,049 42 


46 97 


Tennessee 


63 31 


291 06 


287 77 


641 34 


55 09 


Georgia 


1,346 34 


4,133 92 


7,052 03 


6,526 41 


786 19 


Louisiana 


4,832 24 


13,504 09 


23,217 92 


27,092 10 


6,772 13 


Illinois Territory 












Michigan " 


80 04 


71 05 


39 59 


140 98 




Indiana " 








6 44 


47 34 


Missouri " 








18S 66 




Mississippi " 


210 13 


750 47 


1,053 58 


1,590 72 


392 20 


District of Columbia 


385 65 


4,413 96 


8,601 07 


6,11S 67 


1,473 27 




154,629 20 


825,132 83 


729,109 00 


602,093 95 


60,317 10 



CHAP. VIII.] 



TAX TABLES. 



235 



Internal Duties which accrued on Refined Sugar. 



STATES OR TERRI- 
TORIES. 


In 1814. 


1815. 


1816. 


1817. 


1818. 


New Hampshire 
Massachusetts 


3,542 36 


4,394 17 


15,182 74 


18,445 45 


4,244 93 


Vermont 
Rhode Island 






23S 75 


672 39 


235 74 


Connecticut 
New York 
New Jersey 
Pennsylvania 


7,468 12 
157 03 


40,279 69 
6,127 41 


57,065 07 

22 38 

33,634 65 


60,180 25 
39,237 90 


7,686 99 


Delaware 
Maryland 
Virginia 
North Carolina 
Ohio 


23 40 


18,619 48 
980 32 


27,024 48 
1,900 29 

406 42 


24,640 27 
1,556 28 

1,419 95 




Kentucky 
South Carolina 












Tennessee 












Georgia 
Louisiana 


479 00 


408 05 


164 66 


147 01 


90 17 


Illinois Territory 












Michigan " 
Indiana " 












Missouri " 












Mississippi " 
District of Columbia 




4,413 96 


5,695 50 


4,606 28 


740 63 




11,669 91 


75,223 OS 


141,334 94 


150,905 78 


12,998 46 



236 



TAX TABLES, 



[JULY, 1813. 



03 



C3 

BO 



8 

5j 
53 

CO 

|i 

53 

8 








CO 

CO 


1^ 

P3 u 


211 23 

4.439 54 

70S 33 
348 69 

8.440 28 
527 M 

48.245 21 
862 89 
7.575 20 
3.758 71 
960 00 
1,676 34 
3,385 86 

719 33 

2,531 88 

101 41 

2,876 11 


CO 

CO 
CO 

CO 

t-" 

CO 




hi 

o § 
m 


27 06 

302 30 

11 70 

52 45 

169 70 

1,419 41 

722 85 

3,141 98 

2.934 82 

1.276 86 

1,399 21 

1.951 37 

' 22 70 

5 90 

30 

611 27 

51 40 

16 80 

504 85 
149 45 


CO 
CO 

Ol 




00 


a! 3 
« 3 

Ma 


1,110-75 
9,039 00 

2,397 30 
5.152 37 

19.945 04 
2,246 02 

16656 97 
1,290 82 
9 678 23 
5 218 50 
5 769 35 
3.237 97 
2 942 64 
3.570 00 
,^0 81 
4.71s 84 
1,875 48 

16 34 

315 00 
7.115 71 


CO 

o 




On paper 

and 

Bank Notes. 


433 82 

11,457 34 

10 25 

6,392 50 

8,858 44 

30.140 09 

4.650 06 

83,406 64 

36.961 72 
48,108 29 
39,551 80 
11 505 67 
11.690 64 

18.962 34 
13,868 75 

3.919 2S 

19.719 71 

13,265 70 

19 60 

75 

194 9^ 

76 20 

2,188 03 

43.992 14 






co 

CO 


P5 g 
ffl C 


1,125 97 
10,463 33 

1,534 35 
3.669 07 

22.690 60 
2.215 76 

20.3bS 43 
1.585 99 
9,488 62 
5.061 54 
3.499 90 
2,324 88 
2,153 71 
3,495 34 
659 39 
1,399 55 
1,848 48 

420 00 
5,423 41 


Ol 

CO 

CO 




r-l (y 

O 3 
M 


542 91 

4,562 18 

23 75 

3,366 07 

8 538 29 

20,852 48 

4,826 30 

93,879 59 

11.865 91 

4s,033 51 

21,429 66 

12,922 36 

12,099 60 

13.904 30 

17,641 24 

3,529 56 

9,049 86 

10,202 97 

2 80 

21 65 

9« 05 

167 70 

1.390 73 

63,585 90 


CO 

(^ 

CO 
UO 
Oi 

CO 
CO 




in 

CO 


1* 


1,020 28 
9,339 73 

1,401 01 
3.015 91 

18,061 48 
2.105 66 

15.638 22 
753 54 
8,166 19 
6.061 96 
2,852 40 
1,870 65 
1.531 IS 
4.093 51 
347 77 
1,070 69 
1,920 00 

4,507 92 


o 

CO 




D. O 

O § 
H 


646 70 

5,520 74 

35 75 

1,131 82 

9,126 97 

57,725 72 
4,868 90 

74,470 96 
3.769 01 

47.590 18 

33.235 88 

11.909 15 
8.964 82 
7.937 97 

18 156 65 
2,118 92 
6.302 95 

10,821 53 
4 50 
16 35 

1,191 02 

93 90 

28,569 31 


o 
1^ 

CI 

o 

Oi 

CO 

CO 




CO 


Banks 

in lieu of 

Bank Notes. 


130 21 
2,880 00 

97 29 
2.445 44 
8,289 31 
1,609 04 
2,874 80 

669 48 
7,716 21 
2,516 96 
1,665 94 

273 79 

4,055 44 

900 37 
384 06 

138 36 

2 713 95 


U3 

oi 

rH 

iq 

qT 

CO 




£. = £ 

C 7= 

O 3 

03 


773 52 

20,741 47 

19 60 

5 825 15 

11,152 07 

87,971 51 

5 905 82 

80,5r0 65 

5,570 10 

35,364 67 

36.308 41 

9132 bO 

6.781 47 

8.238 69 

18 916 55 

1,619 85 

5,736 75 

11,151 21 

7 85 

26 10 

84 10 

983 03 

18,053 90 


Oi 

-V 

03 

ef 

CO 




Pi 

pi H 

°2 
og O 

W E-i 

E- 

"4 

H 

OS 


New Hampshire 

Massachusetts 

Vermont 

Rhode Island 

Connecticut 

New York 

New Jersey 

Pennsylvania 

Delaware 

Maryland 

Virginia 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Kentucky 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Georgia 

Louisiana 

Illinois Territory 

Michigan •' 

Indiana " 

Missouri " 

Mississippi " 

District of Columbia 





CHAP. VIII.] TAX TABLES. 237 

Internal Duties which accrued on Household Furniture. 



STATES OR TERRITORIES. 


In 1815. 


In 1S16. 


In 1817. 


New Hampshire 


376 00 


25 50 




Massachusetts 


677 50 


2,778 50 


2 00 


Vermont 


211 50 


3 00 




Rhode Island 


782 50 






Connecticut 


807 00 


153 00 




New York 


10,877 00 


66 50 




New Jersey 


1,527 50 


287 50 


6 00 


Pennsylvania 




11,364 00 




Delaware 


434 50 






Maryland 


580 50 


4,278 00 




Virginia 


16S 50 


6,013 00 




North Carolina 




1,387 50 




Ohio 


104 50 


276 00 




Kentucky 




72 00 




South Carolina 


2,854 50 


611 00 




Tennessee 




179 00 


31 00 


Georgia 


1,050 00 


1,493 50 




Louisiana 




368 00 




Illinois Territory 








Michigan " 








Indiana " 








Missouri " 






76 50 


Mississippi " 




194 00 




District of Columbia 


1,174 00 






Total 


21,625 50 


29,550 00 


115 50 



Internal Duties which accrued on Gold and Silver Watches. 



STATES OR TERRITORIES. 


In 1S15. 


In 1816. 


In 1817. 


New Hampshire 


3,377 00 


718 00 




Massachusetts 


4,385 50 


12,738 00 


250 00 


Vermont 


2,765 00 


142 00 




Rhode Island 


2,876 00 






Connecticut 


5,457 00 


1.165 00 




New York 


30,449 50 


1,100 50 


4 00 


New Jersey 


7,784 00 


1,060 00 


85 00 


Pennsylvania 




38,709 50 


345 50 


Delaware 


2,943 00 






Maryland 


2,408 00 


12,020 00 




Virginia 


33 00 


14,243 00 




North Carolina 




4,585 50 




Ohio 


3,104 00 


1,114 00 




Kentucky 




543 00 




South Carolina 


5,380 00 


1,230 00 




Tennessee 


252 50 


2,005 00 


169 00 


Georgia 


2,472 00 


5,755 00 




Louisiana 




1,349 00 




Illinois Territory 




126 00 




Michigan " 




72 00 




Indiana ". 








Missouri " 






156 00 


Mississippi " 




473 00 




District of Columbia 


1,636 00 






Total 


75,322 50 


99,148 50 


1,009 50 



238 



TAX TABLES. 



[JULY, 1813. 



Internal Duties which accrued on sundry articles manufactured in 
the United States. 



STATES OR TERRI- 


In 1815. 


In 1816. 


In 1817. 


In 1818. 


TORIES. 










New Hampshire 


4,540 76 


2,486 07 






Massachusetts 


56,784 89 


31,269 46 


576 25 


112 47 


Vermont 


9,250 40 


2,408 39 




10 05 


Rhode Island 


910 00 


543 78 


79 48 


10 51 


Connecticut 


20,504 80 


4,241 53 






New York 


157,176 79 


38,693 33 


58 35 




New Jersey 


2S,546 87 


7,032 81 






Pennsylvania 


228,188 8S 


41,370 28 


207 68 




Delaware 


10,803 31 


1,690 47 






Maryland 


70,746 17 


16,997 89 


23 04 




Virginia 


88,154 31 


19,272 54 


17 50 




North Carolina 


12,801 23 


4,518 92 


1 33 




Ohio 


23,270 60 


5,016 34 






Kentucky 


33,1S4 46 


7,086 12 






South Carolina 


10,156 5S 


2,670 53 






Tennessee 


15,373 43 


2,450 17 






Georgia 


8,993 25 


2,019 24 






Louisiana 


1,283 03 


1,192 05 






Illinois Territory 


220 14 


103 23 






Michigan " 


39 46 


19 08 






Indiana " 


1,064 44 


132 06 






Missouri " 


162 68 


282 48 






Mississippi " 


1,158 61 


2,356 84 


6 56 




District of Columbia 


10,309 97 


2,447 98 






Total 


793,625 06 


196,301 59 


970 19 


133 03 



CHAP. VIII.] 



TAX TABLES. 



239 



s 



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240 



TAX TABLES. 



[JULY, 1813. 



Direct Taxes. 
3,000,000 dollars imposed on the several states on the 2d of 
August, 1813. 

6,000,000 dollars, January 9, 1815. 

3,000,000 « March 5, 1S16. 

These taxes were assessed to the respective states as follows : 





Tax of Aug. 3, 


Tax of Jan. 9, 


Tax of March 6, 


STATES. 


1813. 


1815. 


1816. 


New Hampshire 


97,049 21 


193,755 99 


97,178 54 


Vermont 


98,534 52 


196,789 29 


98,411 16 


Massachusetts 


318,154 84 


632,065 00 


317,059 39 


Rhode Island 


34,758 86 


69,431 78 


34,761 S3 


Connecticut 


118,533 63 


236,507 38 


118,401 08 


New York 


435,028 35 


860,283 24 


430,141 62 


New Jersey 


108,871 83 


218,252 77 


109,921 90 


Pennsylvania 


365,479 16 


733,941 09 


374,336 02 


Delaware 


32,294 76 


63,847 32 


32,229 30 


Maryland 


152,327 64 


306,708 81 


153.381 42 


Virginia 


369,018 44 


739,738 06 


370,728 80 


North Carolina 


220,962 98 


440,321 11 


225,240 57 


South Carolina 


151,905 48 


303,810 96 


151,905 48 


Georgia 


94,936 49 


189,872 98 


94,936 49 


Kentucky 


168,928 76 


341,316 24 


173,455 01 


Tennessee 


111,039 59 


221,567 44 


110,239 38 


Ohio 


104,150 14 


208,300 28 


104,150 14 


Louisiana 


31,621 43 


57,519 22 


29,852 43 


District of Columbia 




20,605 86 


10,297 84 


Total 


3,013,596 11 


6,034,634 82 


3,036,628 42 



Agreeably to the acts imposing these taxes, any state that paid 
its quota into the treasury at designated times was entitled to a 
deduction of 10 or 15 per centum thereon. Such payments were 
made by the following states. 



STATES. 


Tax of 1814. 


Tax of 1815. 


Tax of 1816. 


Total. 


New York 
New Jersey 
Pennsylvania 
Virginia 
South Carolina 
Georgia 
Kentucky 
Ohio 


108,871 83 
365,479 16 
369,018 44 
151,905 48 
94,936 49 
168,928 76 
104,150 14 


860,283 24 

303,810 96 
189,S72 98* 

208,300 28 


430,141 62 

151,905 48 
94,936 49* 

104,150 14 






1,363,290 30 


1,562,267 46 


781,133 73 


3,706,691 49 



* Deduction of 15 per cent, except in case of Georgia, - - 532,269 60 
which was allowed only 10 per cent, on tax of 1815, and 
paid her whole tax of 1815. Paid into the treasury by 
these states 3,274,421 89 



CHAP. VIII.] TAX TABLES. 241 

The total amount of taxes were — 

In 1813 - $3,013,596 11 

In 1815 - 6,034,634 82 

III 1816 - 3,036,628 42 



112,084.859 35 



Exceeding those laid about $55,000. 

Deduct errors of assessment al- 
lowed by treasury - - $25,284 17 

Deduct insolvencies of individu- 
als taxed - - - 17,225 43 



42,509 60 



112,042,349 75 



And if there be deducted the quotas paid by the 

states, as above ... - 3,706,691 49 



There remained to be collected by the collectors $8,335,658 26 
These taxes appear to have been paid by individuals with 
great promptness, and to have been accounted for by the collec- 
tors with general fidelity. 

The payments by individuals were — 

In 1814 - $1,258,871 55 

In 1S15 - 833,111 41 

In 1816 - 3,768,545 02 

In 1817 - 1,839,447 S6 

In 1818 - 232,S88 45 



$7,932,864 29 
Which, deducted from the above amount of - $8,335,658 26 



Leaves balance of taxes remaining due Decem- 
ber, 1818 $402,793 97 

A large portion of which consisted of taxes on lands which 

were purchased by the United States in consequence of not 

selling for the amount of taxes, and of small taxes, which did 

not equal the extraordinary expenses, of sale. 

During the above years there were paid into the treasury by the 
states and collectors - - - - $10,72S,968 28 

And from 1818 to 1830 - - - 209,768 42 



$10,938,736 70 

VOL. I. — 21 



242 TAX TABLES. [OCT., 1813. 

To which, if there be added the amount de- 
ducted from the payments by the states - 532,269 60 
And the expenses of collection, as stated below, 473,116 34 
Leaves unpaid into the treasury only - - 98,227 1 1 



The expenses of collection were as follows — 
In 1S14 - $75,996 53 
In 1815 - 50,665 19 

In 1816 - 200,765 66 
In 1817 - 124,911 73 

In 1818 - 20,777 23 



Sl2,042,349 75 



$473,1 16 34 

Which is about six per centum on $7,932,864 29 collected by 

the collectors in those years. 

From these statements it appears that — 

The accruing duties amounted to - -$17,311,183 15 

Being on account of refined sugar, sales at auc- 
tion, carriages, retailers, stamps, and licenses 
to distillers, for four years ; on distilled spirits 
for one year and five months ; on manufac- 
tured articles, nine months ; and on watches 
and household furniture, one year. It appears 
from treasury statements that of these duties 
there were refunded in the years 1814, 1815, 
1816, and 1817 - -$438,481 69 

And debentures paid on spirits and 

refined sugar - 57,947 20 

496,428 19 



$16,814,754 96 

The duties refunded, consisting principally of payments made 
for duties beyond the period of the repealing acts. 

That the sums received by the collectors amount- 
ed, in the above years, to - 16,270,846 46 

That the moneys drawn into the treasury in the 
five years 1814, 1815, 1816, 1817, 1818, by 
warrants, amounted to - 15,122,848 10 

That there has been paid to the year 1830, in- 
clusive - 646,116 75 



$15,786,964 S5 



CHAP. VIII.] TAX TABLES. 243 

That this amount is exclusive of the expenses of collection, 

which were as follows : — 
Commissions and allowances to collectors for the years 1814, 

1815, 1816, 1817, and 1818 - - - #847,395 21 

Contingent expenses, same period, $76,260 86 
Measuring stills - - - 17,107 86 



$93,36S 72 
Deduct moiety of fines and penalties 41,9S6 40 



51,3S2 32 



5,777 53 

Being about 5 ? V per centum on the amounts received by the 
collectors. 

If the collectors' receipts and compensations be taken for the 
years 1815 and 1816, when the system was in the fullest opera- 
tion, it will be found that the expenses of collections do not quite 
amount to five per centum. 

Although the taxes at first laid were much heavier than ever 
before experienced by the American people, soon doubled, then 
added to, and always paid with remarkable alacrity, yet their 
existence proved the Union's want of statistical information easily 
and cheaply obtained, and of inestimable importance, on which 
depend the best mode of devising taxes and their productive- 
ness. During and after the projection of some of them, it was 
necessary, before they could be organized, to gather information 
from the remotest parts of the Union, which came alloyed with 
the biases and obliquities of self-interest. The inevitable conse- 
quences were erroneous duties, and still greater mistakes as to 
their productiveness ; sharing the incapacity of government, 
either executive or legislative, to attain just results. The secre- 
tary of the treasury estimated the revenue from manufactures 
at $3,500,000, which gave less than $1,000,000; from household 
furniture, at more than $2,000,000, which yielded but about 
$51,000; from watches, at $750,000, when less than $176,000 
was the fruit. Altogether the treasury got but about $1,200,000 
on what was estimated to produce $6,500,000; deficit signalizing 
that the means of ascertainment, arrangement, and execution 
were extremely imperfect. No tax can be imposed which will 



244 STATISTICS. [OCT., 1813. 

not affect agriculture, commerce, or manufactures, directly or 
indirectly ; and they should, as far as possible, be impartially 
and benignantly distributed among these elements of national 
wealth ; for which the best, most extensive, and particular in- 
formation should be obtained, and systematically embodied at 
the seat of general government ; which has never been done, 
hardly attempted. Is it the infirmity of free and confederate 
states to neglect such lessons, till taught by adversity and 
distress ? Mr. Smith, the commissioner of the revenue, thought 
that there should be a department or board charged with this 
supervision. Young members of Congress at the seat of govern- 
ment, with mostly little knowledge beyond rudiments of law, enact 
laws often based on erroneous information, involving national in- 
terests, including expenses of millions which might be saved by 
a few thousands of provident economy. The expense of internal 
duties has been a fruitful theme of animadversion and mistake 
assumed as one of the strongest objections to the system. The 
duties of 1791 and thereafter cost enormously owing to the 
smallness of the whole amount and administrative inexperience. 
Hamilton, though a master mind, was inexperienced. The col- 
lection of six hundred thousand dollars from territories so wide- 
spread and poor, was hardly possible without great charges or 
frauds. The two insurrections which broke out in Pennsyl- 
vania in 1794 and 1798, and required military force to extinguish 
their resistance to the whisky taxes, are not taken into account 
in reckoning their expenses which they largely increased. 

On the 13th December, 1817, when the report of the com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, pursuant to the president's recom- 
mendation for the repeal of the internal duties, came for con- 
sideration before the House of Representatives, the measure 
was strenuously opposed by Joseph Hopkinson and Henry 
Baldwin, the former of whom contended that revenue would 
be wanted which it was impolitic to discard, on general prin- 
ciples, and the latter undertook to show that it would cause 
an early deficiency of revenue, besides proving injurious other- 
wise, however popular it might momentarily be. Mr. Hopkin- 
son did not believe in perpetual peace, or overflowing treasuries. 
" Besides," said he, " if we liave really too much money, why 
not remove the impost from salt, reduce the tonnage, the duties 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES REPEALED. 245 

on sugary coffee, tea, and other articles, no longer luxuries, but 
necessaries of life, for the poor as well as the rich ?" He feared 
Congress were treading the downhill course to lead again to 
slaughter. Mr. Baldwin reminded the House of the facts that these 
taxes were not laid till the third session after war was declared, 
and before their proceeds got into the treasury the stock of the 
government had been hawked about to any bidder, and the 
government had become the prey of every shark and usurer in 
the stock alleys. He was unwilling to trust the assurance of 
the committee that the tax would be laid again whenever neces- 
sary. He believed that the repeal would be unpopular; the 
people were no longer to be misled by names, but knew that it 
was better to pay their taxes directly than indirectly. On the 
other hand, Mr. John Sergeant insisted that, without any view to 
popularity, these taxes ought to be immediately repealed, be- 
cause most of the system of internal revenue had been removed 
and the particulars left were extremely objectionable ; duties on 
refined sugar, a domestic industry formerly favoured by draw- 
backs, on retailers and on stamps, operating oppressively on 
meritorious and industrious classes and persons. You arm for 
battle and disarm afterwards. By fostering the interests of citi- 
zens, relieving them from burthens in peace, you enable them to 
prepare for war. Mr. John Holmes hoped never to see either a 
surplus in the treasury or a system of internal duties, which should 
be reserved for emergencies, when only would the people endure 
it. To maintaining the military and naval establishments of the 
country he had no objection, but could not consent to a broken 
system of internal taxation. Mr. Philip Barbour remarked that 
the theory of our government does not contemplate internal reve- 
nue as its permanent policy. Taxes on imports are to be the 
principal resource. Of the two systems one is voluntary, the 
other compulsive; and it is obvious that the latter are not 
wanted now. If so, it is both duty and policy to repeal them. 
Internal duties are war taxes, imposed for that exigency, and 
then cheerfully paid. But when not wanted, why take their 
money from those who can best employ it, to let it lie idle in 
the treasury? There is energy enough in the people to call 
out the public resources when needed, and it is worse than use- 
less to do it unnecessarily. James Johnson, Timothy Pitkin, 

21* 



246 TAXES REPEALED. [1818. 

and J. S. Smith also advocated immediate repeal by cogent 
arguments, Mr. Pitken particularly condemning the carriage tax, 
and Mr. Smith the whisky tax, as oppressive and unjust. Felix 
Walker said, as the House was about to take leave of an old 
acquaintance, the internal taxes, on which he heartily congratu- 
lated his fellow-citizens, he called for the yeas and nays on the 
passage of the bill, which were 161 yeas to five nays. These five 
were Joseph Hopkinson, afterwards judge of the District Court 
of the United States for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, 
Henry Baldwin, afterwards judge of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, Henry Middleton, once governor of South Caro- 
lina, and afterwards minister of the United States in Russia, 
Jeremiah Nelson, a merchant of Massachusetts, and Henry R. 
Storrs, who died an eminent lawyer of New York. When five 
members, of various politics, record their names against a mea- 
sure recommended by the executive, and voted for by one 
hundred and sixty, their sincerity and resolution are conspi- 
cuous. The objection to internal duties founded on their ex- 
pense is not sustained by those of the war. Although the 
measure was new, the administration inexperienced, without 
statistical information, and the taxes small in amount, the cost of 
collecting the internal duties did not exceed five, nor that of the 
direct tax six per cent.; much less than the same amount of 
impost could be collected for, or than it is, without adverting to 
the large expenses of the light house establishments, and reve- 
nue cutters. There are many more persons employed by govern- 
ment in collecting the customs, than internal duties ; and more 
executive patronage lavished. If internal duties break in upon 
the dwellings and privacy of individuals, household furniture 
and watches alone were attended with that consequence. Nine- 
tenths of the revenue were derived from stamps, refined sugar, 
stills and distilled spirits, retailers of licenses and goods and 
carriages, all objects ether palpably exposed to public view in 
stores or factories unconnected with private dwellings. The 
odious name and idea of excise, originating with the corrupt 
ministry of Walpole, and said to be corruptly used by it, preju- 
dice men of English lineage against this imposition. The de- 
ranged and degraded currency of the United States, rendering 
the tax unequal in different parts as the precious metals are found 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXES REPEALED. 247 

or scarce, is a more substantial objection; not less applicable, 
however, to the customs than to internal duties. The direct or 
land tax should be reserved for exigencies of war. The value 
of the land and slaves of the United States, estimated at six 
thousand millions of dollars, at ten cents in the hundred dollars, 
would yield six millions of dollars. But this is a fund to be left to 
the states in peace, and only drawn upon for the Union in war. 
Internal duties on the same objects, to half the amount of those 
laid in the late war would afford ten millions a year ; a certain 
revenue independent of foreign commerce, varying but little, 
yet always increasing with the growth of the country ; in prac- 
tical and habitual operation, always susceptible of improvement 
or enlargement according to emergencies ; rendering resort to 
loans, when necessary, as they probably always would be for 
hostilities, easy at reasonable rates and securing their repayment. 
The influence of internal duties on the perpetual controversy of 
a tariff of customs, would be highly beneficial ; rendering them 
susceptible of easy and satisfactory adjustment, reduced to a 
general average, upon which all parts of the United States might 
agree, reserving high duties for a few articles of indispensable 
national necessity, and preventing the sectional strife which has 
convulsed the Union with alternate surplus and deficiency of 
revenue. Great development of foreign commerce would ensue, 
to insure a constant balance of trade with all the world in our 
favour. Stability, the vital need of all industry, of commerce, 
manufactures, agriculture and income, would take place of fluc- 
tuations, equally hurtful to private and public wealth, individual 
character and national credit. 

The kindred subjects of commerce, manufactures and finance 
are all one — they are but currency. Three or four millions from 
internal duties, eighteen or nineteen from customs, one or two 
from lands, passing through the medium of coin or its equiva- 
lent, would bring constant tranquillity and constant progress. 
Some internal duties would serve to check the growing tendency 
of Congress to extravagant and unwarrantable disbursements. 
Revenues liable to little fluctuation, would lead to administrative 
economy, a more saving process than violent reduction or exci- 
sion, the gage of popularity thrown down by contending parties 
to be redeemed by neither. 



248 INTERNAL DUTIES. [1818. 

Notwithstanding the assurance of the President Monroe, and 
the chairman of the finance committee of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, as well as other members, that both the executive 
and legislative may always be relied upon, for recommending and 
voting taxes whenever necessary, the proof by experience was, 
that neither did so when war was declared, much less before it. 
One third of it elapsed in years of defeats and disasters, before 
Congress taxed their constituents. Meantime a presidential elec- 
tion took place, till which event no party in power likes to 
risk a conflict with the party out of power in this republic. Taxes 
are compulsory, palpable and annoying ; customs optional and 
imperceptible. In other countries, those particularly with which 
we are most acquainted, excessive taxation terrifies us. All the 
real property of France, is held by its seeming owners only in trust 
for government, into whose coffers, the proceeds of all of it are 
drained every third generation. Proprietors have but one-third 
of their rents left for themselves: two-thirds are every year taken 
by the treasury. Such impositions levied for standing armies, 
regal executives, and other appropriations offensive to Americans, 
disgust and deter us from beginning a system liable to such 
abuses. The peace budget of France amounts to two hundred 
and fifty millions of dollars, nearly one half land taxes, or bur- 
thens on the real estates of that country ; and less than ten mil- 
lions derived from impost. 

That is far short of the peace budget of Great Britain, the 
bitter fruit of unrestricted taxation, credit, paper money, and 
representative government. Including tithes, poor rates, and 
local expenses, (not figuring in the Parliament exhibits,) the 
annual expenditures of Great Britain in peace, exceed three 
hundred millions of dollars, an amount of burthens which no 
people ever bore before ; and with a national debt, which it is not 
easy to represent in dollars, so enormous is the sum, mostly accu- 
mulated since Walpole introduced excises. These are portentous 
growths, to caution against planting their seeds, which the calm 
observer of national development may contemplate without ex- 
aggerated apprehensions. 

The heaviest pecuniary burthens laid on the United States by 
the war, were not taxes, but ninety-eight millions of loans au- 
thorized by various acts of Congress, in the years 1S11, '12, '13, 



CHAP. VIII.] INTERNAL DUTIES. 249 

'14 and '15, none at an interest less than six per cent., some at 
great discount, and all paid in depreciated currency: five millions 
in 181 1, reimbursable in not less than six years, eleven millions in. 
1812, twenty-three millions and a half in 1813, thirty-four mil- 
lions in 1814, twenty-four millions and a half in 1815, all reim- 
bursable in not less than twelve years, except those portions, 
which, anticipating taxes laid, were to be paid by the taxes as 
soon as collected. By acts of Congress of the years 1812, '13, '14 
and 15, treasury notes to the amount of forty millions of dollars, 
all but the last emission of twenty-five millions, respecting which 
it was optional with the president whether the notes should bear 
interest— bearing interest at five and two-fifths per cent, a year. 
By several acts, the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to 
issue treasury notes instead of parts of the loans before mentioned. 
Thus considerably more than the whole war debt was borrowed 
for it, and paid in paper money. Treasury notes fell as low as 
seventeen per cent., and the public loans to thirty per cent, 
below par during the war. The sinking fund and the taxes 
were pledged for punctual payment of the principal and interest 
of the sums borrowed. The public faith was also pledged in the 
terms of the acts of Congress ; if such expression adds to the inhe- 
rent obligation, which it is as easy to break with, as without it, if so 
dishonestly disposed. The war of 1S12 was carried on by paper 
money, almost as much as that of the Revolution. But more per- 
fect union, better government, and greater resources enabled the 
country to pay the debt of the last war, while the three hundred 
and sixty millions, which the first cost, remain unpaid, till par- 
tially repaid by Congress by that system of profuse pensions to 
the soldiers of the Revolution, which is some atonement for con- 
tinental money and national insolvency, crowning that era of 
national independence with national dishonesty. 

No such blot disfigures the war of 1812. Its large debt has 
been paid, every cent of it ; and with it, a remnant of the old 
debt of the confederation. The striking and effectual difference 
between the two, is, that by the present constitution, the federal 
principle acts directly on the taxables ; not indirectly through a 
state by its authority, or liable to any state, sectional or local 
counteraction. The power radiated immediately from the federal 
government throughout the whole United States, in every town, 



250 INTERNAL DUTIES. [1818. 

village and field, lighting upon every person outright, without 
intervention, all as citizens of one and the same nation. Federal 
superintendents collected it. The federal judiciary administered 
the law to regulate and enforce the assessment and collection. 
The taxes were paid forthwith, into the federal treasury. That 
provision of the constitution saved the war from nullification. 
For if any state, on any pretext, could have withheld its propor- 
tion, that fatal hinderance would have been interposed. It was 
the avowed object of the Hartford Convention, on the plea that 
the federal government did not afford adequate protection to 
several of the eastern states ; its avowed object was such a change 
as would allow them to collect and expend their own proportion 
of federal taxation. Effecting that change would have disorgan- 
ized, probably annulled the union of states, and brought the war 
to disastrous conclusion. In this respect it may be questioned whe- 
ther the bounty by act of Congress proffered to the states for ad- 
vancing their direct taxes, as several of them did in the best spirit, 
was not a dangerous anti-federal expedient. The militia power, 
divided as it is between Union and State, endangered hostilities. 
The tax power so divided, would have brought them to naught. 
In their utmost need, however, when federal government was 
much exhausted, the states, as states, proved the war's efficient 
reinforcement. 

The method of taxation was excellent and completely success- 
ful. But the medium of payment was as bad as paper money, 
irredeemable in coin, could render it. In a future chapter, when 
relating the enactment by Congress, in 1814, under Dallas' admin- 
istration of the treasury department, of a bill chartering the second 
Bank of the United States, there will be occasion for full expla- 
nation of the banking principle, with which England has adul- 
terated money. The United States, with their inherent proneness 
to exaggerate all facilitation of progress and acquisition, have 
abused even English principles of currency. The war of 1812 
first afflicted this country with that greatest of all public evils, 
that adulteration of the blood of the body politic, a debased cur- 
rency, by means of what is called suspension of specie payments 
by banks. In 1797, England had recourse, by act of Parliament, 
to this most revolutionary of all bloodless violations of due course 
of law, and the natural order of things, under the pressure of 



CHAP. VIII.] TAXATION. 251 

war. Going beyond that fatal precedent, the same system of 
ruin was introduced in this country, without law, in defiance of 
it, on the plea of necessity, by common tacit, passive submission 
of the people and federal government to the worst licentiousness 
of state power and privileged fraud. Brokers' shops, called 
banks, cheated the community in every way, by paper circulated 
as money. Steam is not a more prodigious impulse to locomo- 
tion by land and water, than this most ruinous of all England's in- 
heritances by her American colonies, has proved calamitous to the 
morals, property and prosperity of the United States. In vain did 
Madison protest against it in the Federalist, and the federal con- 
stitution, as was believed, provide against it. The French guillo- 
tine of Robespierre's terrorist anarchy destroyed fewer lives than 
the English gallows, under Pitt's dictatorship, sacrificed to the 
remorseless security of paper money. Act of Parliament making 
it a tender, was as great an imposture, as setting up the goddess 
of reason to be worshiped. Universal demoralization has en- 
sued in this country, so imitative and idolatrous of that undermin- 
ing liberty, abolishing equality, sanctioning and systematizing 
luxury, knavery and crime. Every village, every street in every 
town, has an incorporated bank, where the neighbourhood must 
pay toll to get its food ground, as at the lord's mill of old; the 
country deserted for cities : cities become bloated sores, with 
populace either ragged or gilded, living like the Roman, on alms 
and shows, furnaces of corruption, anarchy and mobs. The in- 
significant jacobin minority of terrorists, who governed France 
by assignats, gave that country infinitely better paper money 
than the bank of England, and the banks of the United States, 
during what is called suspension of specie payments, that is, 
stoppage of all payments— for the assignats rested on large and 
valuable real estate, pledged for their redemption, and sufficient 
for much of it. It was by paper money that the English national 
debt was increased beyond all hope of payment. Paper money 
renders sinking funds mere delusion, commerce a lottery, industry 
a shame, deprives manufacturers of all protection, reduces agri- 
culture to penury, is the fuel of incessant wars, the great scourge 
of modern civilization and improvement. In any three years of 
the ten, from 1S35 to 1845, it cost the United States incalculably 
more than the three years of war with Great Britain, from 1812 



252 PAPER MONEY. [1818. 

to 1815. Partial recovery from the prostration it inflicted on Eng- 
land, during the twenty-three years of suspension, from 1797 to 
1822, agonized that mighty empire more than twenty years of 
tremendous warfare with France. 

By this denunciation of the paper money, which the last year 
of the war of 1S12 let loose upon the United States, paper pro- 
mises to pay money, as the principal medium of all large com- 
mercial transactions, are not disowned. Individual promissory 
notes and bills of exchange are indispensable ; as necessary and 
useful in their places as the precious metals : redeemable bank 
notes too are in the habitual dealings of the American people. It 
is the privilege conferred by government to substitute them irre- 
sponsibly for coin that has unhinged it and demoralized com- 
munities. The privilege to be irresponsible, while performing 
as individuals this primary function of government, without in- 
dividual responsibility to government or individuals, is vastly 
greater and more pernicious than any prerogative of nobility. 
Paper, as the means of payment, is as useful as coin ; but all 
paper should be issued and transferred upon personal obligations 
to be answerable for its value. The English prime minister, Sir 
Robert Peel, the same pre-eminent reformer of economy to whom 
his country owes her recovery from paper money, and restoration 
to coin standard, has reformed the Bank of England by such near 
approximation to the true principle as can hardly fail to produce 
ultimate complete revival of it. With the immense influence of 
that English example, this country may perhaps be led to perceive 
that cocoa, tobacco, skins, corn, and other primitive substitutes for 
money were much nearer to it than paper, privileged by charter 
of incorporation to make it irredeemably. No religious infidelity, 
no pagan mystery is more preposterous than the foolish belief 
that money can be made of paper. The precious metals, by 
whatever mysterious exclusiveness of right, are as much money 
in London when paper is by law made to pass for it, as they 
were when it took a cartload of iron in Sparta to pay a trades- 
man's bill. The bank parlour postulate of one dollar in the vault 
to answer for three in circulation, is as gross an absurdity as any 
other refuted by science, common sense and experience. 

Never was metropolitan arrogance so flagrant as when Eng- 
land put this country out of the social, as well as political pale 



CHAP. VIII.] MONEY. 253 

for what is termed repudiation of public debts : the fatal lesson 
she taught us. For three-and-twenty years she never paid one. 
Her king, lords, and commons, bench of bishops, courts of jus- 
tice, Westminster Hall and Guildhall, taught the incorporated 
broker shops of the United States how easy it is to defraud by 
means of paper money. The English statute book groans with 
acts of Parliament reducing either the principal or interest of 
national debts. The whole of the national debt can never be 
provided for but by the sponge of a revolution. Deluded to 
the extravagances which paper money always engenders, states, 
corporations, and individuals in this country, contracted debts to 
England, mostly for manufactures, charged at a third or more 
beyond their value. The day of responsibility came with tran- 
sient inability to pay in money. We paid precisely as the 
British government during a quarter of a century paid all its 
debts, in promises to pay : and, unlike English promises to pay, 
American promises to pay will all be redeemed by payment in 
money, while English promises to pay never will or can be. Not 
only so ; but the sentiment of probity is less loosened here than 
there. While practical repudiation was long the law there, it 
never was law here. Bank notes never were, could not be 
made, legal tender in the United States. The day must come, 
cannot be distant here, when all debts will be paid in money : in 
England that day for the national debt can never come. Not 
a State of the American confederacy has ever failed to disown 
repudiation, while to a certain practical extent it is of frequent 
recurrence in English government, and must be the only eventual 
resort there where repudiation or revolution is the national option. 
For superintending the collection of the direct tax and internal 
revenue, Congress, on the 24th of July, 1813, created an office in 
the treasury department, to be filled by an officer called Com- 
missioner of the Revenue, charged under direction of the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, with preparing all forms necessary for 
collectors and assessors, distributing licenses, and generally super- 
intending all officers employed in assessing and collecting taxes ; 
authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to transfer the collec- 
tion of impost and tonnage duties, if he should be of opinion that 
it promoted the public interest, from the comptroller of the 
treasury to the commissioner of the revenue. The president 
conferred this laborious and important place on Mr. Samuel 
vol. i. — 22 



254 MONEY. [JULY, 1S13. 

Harrison Smith, to whom I am beholden for most of the details 
concerning it. Mr. Smith is still living at the city of Washington, 
where he was appointed President of the Branch Bank of the 
United States, some time after his function as commissioner of 
revenue ceased in 1818, by the repeal of the whole system. On 
the removal of the seat of federal government from Philadelphia to 
Washington, he accompanied it, and was editor of the National In- 
telligencer during Jefferson's administration, and till succeeded in 
that employment by the present editors, Messrs. Gales and Seaton. 
The tone of moderation and decorum, for which that leading jour- 
nal has always been remarkable, began with Mr. Smith, who en- 
joyed the confidence of Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe 
and John Quincy Adams. He is a gentleman of respectable literary 
and scientific attainments, much respected by all who know him ; 
especially for his excellent management of an important fiscal 
dependence of government during the war of 1812. The rude 
presidential reform, which shook so many from their positions, on 
the political revolution of Jackson's advent to chief magistracy, 
displaced Mr. Smith with his bank. Government which Jefferson 
inaugurated, Madison mitigated, and Monroe melted into an era 
of good feelings, Jackson revived to radical democracy, beyond 
that which Mr. Smith and others of the adherents of the three 
former democratic presidents deemed right. It required the rough 
edge of a soldier's broadsword to hack out the gangrene with 
which paper money, under colour of bank abuses, state and fede- 
ral, diseased America. Jackson's detestation of that scourge was 
not more implacable than Madison's, as his eloquent reprobation 
of it testifies in the Federalist. His mode of extirpation would, 
no doubt, have been different : but his determination to effect it 
the same. 

Paper money will be treated more fully in another part of this 
historical sketch, when the creation of a national bank as a war 
measure and suspension of coin payments by certain state banks 
come to be considered. To return now from a digression or 
anticipation which this topic may have provoked into the narra- 
tive appropriate to the year 1813: — the war of 1812, notwith- 
standing a diseased currency, was far from disadvantageous to 
national resource eventually. 

The annexed tabular statements will show that by commercial 
vexations, the income of the United States was almost as much 



CHAP. VIII.] MONEY. 255 

reduced before as during the war, that it was less in 1809 and 1S10 
than in 1812 ; reduced one half from 1808 to 1809 and 1810; very- 
little more in 1811 than in 1813; and so much increased in 1816 
as to prove that then, far from any permanent injury, it caused a 
spring to the national wealth on the return of peace The average 
and total of the years 1812, '13, '14, '15 and '16, that is, during 
the war and one year after, were greater than during the live 
years preceding war. The sales of public lands increased year 
after year every year during war. So did the postages: although 
the receipts from taxes and internal revenue were scarcely per- 
ceptible till 1S14, the third year of the war, and then they scarce 
exceeded one million and a half of dollars. The evils of the war 
were as much magnified as its advantages, hereafter to be more 
fully shown, are apt to be undervalued. 

The tabular views annexed of — 1. The income of the United 
States; 2. The customs from 1S08 to 1S16 inclusive; 3. The in- 
ternal revenue, while in operation ; 4. The expenses of collection; 
5. The war loans ; and, 6. The treasury notes issued for the war 
are full of instruction as to its effects. These tables have been 
prepared with great care, from the best materials. 



256 



TABLES. 



[JULY, 1813. 



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CHAP. VIII.l 



TABLES. 



257 



No. 2. — A statement exhibiting the gross and net revenue which 
accrued annually from customs, during the years 1808 to 1816 inclu- 
sive, and also the payments into the treasury and expenses of collection 
during the same period. 



bo 


1 








c »l B 


c • 


Gross revenuel Debentures 


Expenses 


Net 


Payments into 


§ g.2 


go 


from customs, issued, boun- 


of collec- 


revenue. 


the Treasury. 


V X « 






ties & allow- 


tion. 






^iS'o 


<a co 




ances to fish- 








U <" y 


>H 




ing vessels. 








P5 ° ° 


1808 


11,2S4,939 44 


409,548 55 


543,227 14 


10,332,163 75 


16,363,550 58 


4-99 


1809 


11,777,714 40 


4,755,548 18 


494,998 02 


6,527,168 20 


7,296,020 58 


7-04 


1810 


16,794,300 95 


3,841,428 05 


439,382 87 


12,513,490 03 


8,583,309 31 


3-39 


1811 


10,571,513 21 


2,228,029 13 


440,924 46 


7,902,559 62 


13,313,222 73 


5-28 


1812 


15,160,469 51 


1,542,622 19 


475,838 95 


13,142,008 37 


8,958,777 53 


3-49 


1S13 


7,699,177 31 


580,327 16 


410,483 94 


6,708,366 21 


13,224,623 25 


5-76 


1814 


4,632,306 81 


26,082 37 


355,862 85 


4,250,361 59 


5,998,772 08 


7-72 


1815 


3S,477,783 05 ; 1,706,744 96 


465,015 58 


36,306,022 51 


7,282,942 22 


1-26 


1816 


33,216,104 92 '4,915,631 06 


816,373 50 


27,484,100 36 


36,306,S74 88 


2-88 



No. 3.. — A statement exhibiting the gross and net revenue which 
accrued under the several acts laying internal duties, and also the 
expenses of collection and payment into the treasury under the said 
acts. 



be a 
s ,o 

E s 

fi <» 

QJ ^ 

^ ■ 

CO 


Gross 
Revenue. 


Deduct 


Net 
Revenue. 


Payments 

into the 

Treasury. 


Rate per 
cent, of 
expenses 
of collec- 
tion. 


Duties 

refunded, 

debentures 

paid, and 

other 
charges. 


Expenses 

of 
Collection. 


1814 
1815 
1816 
1817* 


3,311,112 61 
6,423,490 34 
4,725,842 44 
3,324,853 67 


12,208 59 
129,172 88 

23,389 33 
366,314 37 


138,825 06 
277,628 92 
311,313 26 
368,772 85 


3,160,078 96 
6,016,688 54 
4,391,139 85 
2,589,766 45 


1,662,984 82 
4,678,059 07 
5,124,708 31 
2,678,100 77 


4.19 

4.41 

6.62 

12.46 



* The expense of collection was increased this year by additional allow- 
ances to collectors, authorized by the Act of 23d December, 1817, which abo- 
lished these duties. The average expense of collection for the years 1814, 
1815 and 1816, may be estimated at 5 7 > ff per cent. 



22' 



258 



TAX TABLES. 



[JULY, 1813. 



No. 4. — A statement exhibiting the gross and net revenue which 
accrued under the several acts laying a direct tax, and also the ex- 
penses of collection and payments into the treasury under the same 
respectively. 







Deduct 






, 


tog 

.5 -Q 
















Gross 


Errors in 


Expenses 


Net 


Payments 


Rate per 


•/ ^ 


Revenue or 


assessment 


of 


Revenue. 


into the 


cent, of 


s« 


Assessment. 


and sundry 


Collection. 




Treasury. 


expenses 


£ S 




other 








of collec- 


C<5 




charges. 








tion. 


1814 


3,026,9S9 96 


14,106 62 


300,754 79 


2,712,128 55 


2,219,497 36 


9.98 


1815 


6,091,625 42 


43,300 77 


475,566 37 


5,572,758 28 


2,162,673 41 


7.86 


1816 


3,099,419 49 


51,529 01 


236,756 53 


2,811,133 95 


4,253,635 09 


7.77 



No. 5.— Loans of 1812, 1813, 1814 and 1815. 

The Secretary of the Treasury, in his re- 
port of December, 1815, estimated the whole 
amount of the funded debt, in reference to 
the late war, at $63,144,972 50 

The amount actually funded, as appears by 
the public accounts, is stated at $62,661,228 87 

The expenses incident to these loans 
amounted to $121,361 18, which is equal to 

°tVo P er cent - 



No. 6.— Treasury Notes issued in 1812, 1813, 1814 and 1815. 

By the report of the Secretary of Novem- 
ber, 1818, it appears that treasury notes were 
issued under the several acts of 1812, 1813, 
1814 and 1815, amounting to $36,680,794 00 

The expenses incident to their issue were 
$63,630 32, which is equal to T ' ff % per cent. 

The President of the United States, during the war of 1812, 
without either military or popular talents, was, nevertheless, 
fitted for the crisis by calm, tenacious, honest and superior intel- 
ligence, intimate knowledge of the constitution, and inflexible 
adhesion to its requirements. James Madison was a small man, 



CHAP. VIII.] MADISON. 



259 



with nothing imposing in his appearance, and shy, cold, manners, 
circumspect and reserved without being taciturn, his face wrin- 
kled and wilted, his dress plain, his conversation luminous and 
edifying ; his political discriminations and analysis nice even to 
subtlety. His youth, after good education, was spent in close 
miscellaneous study. Though just of an age to embark in the 
revolution, of which he was an advocate, he took no military 
part, but retiring, contemplative, and feeble in health, devoted 
himself to mental cultivation. His life, from first to last, was 
passionless and thoughtful ; though his affections w<ere kind and 
his attachments constant. Most of his politics coincided with 
Jefferson's; but with some modifications, taking nothing for 
granted, by sentiment or sympathy ; rather adopted than natural 
offspring; at any rate the offspring of thought, not impulse. 
He was a constant opponent of all union of politics with reli- 
gion; thoroughly read in the Scriptures, but inscrutably reserved 
in his religious opinions. At twenty-five years of age, in 
1776, elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, he voted for 
instructions to Congress to declare independence ; but made no 
speech or figure, and at the next election was superseded by a 
more forward competitor. The year after, however, his county 
chose him again ; and the legislature elected him in 1779 a mem- 
ber of the council of the state, in which he continued till elected 
a member of Congress in 17S4, uniformly modest, and retiring, 
but useful, industrious and instructive. During his service in the 
council, Patrick Henry and Jefferson were successively Govern- 
ors of Virginia; both of whom experienced Madison's know- 
ledge, wisdom and probity ; not shining, but sure, and constantly 
improving. Jefferson, who delighted to extol him, used to men- 
tion his amiable behaviour, his readiness and facility at drafting 
reports or bills, and the gratuitous help he was always willing to 
give to members of the legislature, and his talents for business. 
Governor Henry, not understanding French, for which there was 
much occasion in communication with the officers of the French 
army, Madison was his interpreter, and otherwise so serviceable 
to Henry, that he was called his secretary. He did not, however, 
learn from Henry the art of public speaking, in which Madison 
was so backward from extreme bashfulness, that Jefferson thought 
Madison would probably have never become the eminent public 
speaker he did, but for accidental training, first in the council of 



260 MADISON. [JULY, 1813. 

Virginia, consisting of only ten persons, so that to speak was little 
more than conversation, and then in Congress, under the confede- 
ration, with only fifty-six gentlemen in secret session without pub- 
lic audience. The conspicuous part he performed is known to all 
in what is called framing (meaning forming) the federal constitu- 
tion, of which from his large contributions and his surviving the 
thirty-nine members of the convention who accomplished it, he 
was called the father. From 1776, when as member of the Vir- 
ginia legislature, he contributed to the Declaration of Independence, 
for forty years till IS 17, when he voluntarily retired from the pre- 
sidency, as member of the public councils of a leading state, as 
member of Congress, as Secretary of State during eight years, and 
chief magistrate during eight years more, no mind has stamped 
more of its impressions on American institutions than Madison's. 
Not a man of genius, like Jefferson, he did not strike the raw 
material of public sentiment from crudity into currency. Not a 
hero like Washington, he did not fill the public administration 
with his own impression. Without towering talents to command 
other men, his ascendant was gradual and intellectual. Yet he 
was nearly always a leading man, and his midway republicanism 
adopted at first, though somewhat affected by the flux and reflux 
of time, is likely to maintain the even tenour of its way. The 
papers of the Federalist are a text-book, of which, without odious 
comparison of Madison's numbers with Hamilton's and Jay's, 
it may be said that the great authority of the work is due to 
their sustaining by it doctrines which Madison above all asserted. 
As soon as the present constitution was adopted, Madison was 
elected to Congress in 1789, and re-elected till 179S ; during 
which eight years his part was so prominent and pervading in 
all deliberations and acts, that none took place without his im- 
portant agency, and in most of the leading measures his was the 
leading part. In the formation of parties he sided with the 
republicans, particularly on the cardinal divisions of the bank 
and the British treaty. But he continued on kind and confi- 
dential terms with Washington, and always acknowledged the 
talents, services and integrity of Hamilton. In Congress he was 
a frequent debater, seldom without full preparation, exhausting 
subjects, so that his arguments suggested and refuted those of 
adversaries which they had not thought of. All his speeches and 
state papers are calm, respectful and forbearing, while earnest, 



CHAP. VIII.] MADISON. 261 

candid and forcible, the diction chaste and elegant, seldom im- 
passioned, though his oft-quoted denunciation in the Federalist of 
paper money is one of the most eloquent appeals extant against 
that modern monster. The resolutions of the Virginia legislature 
of 1798 against the alien and sedition laws, are his production, 
though not then a member of that body, to which he was chosen 
next year, and drew the celebrated report in their vindication, 
which report and resolutions have ever since been standards of 
politics. 

As Jefferson's Secretary of State, at a period when that depart- 
ment, substituting the moral force of reason and international law 
for violence— Jefferson inflexibly resolved on peace at every 
hazard, Madison as cordially convinced of the wisdom of keep- 
ing this growing and feeble country out of the vortex of the 
ruinous warfare by which Europe was devastated, and the ocean 
pillaged — Madison's masterly exertions as the advocate of peace- 
able freedom and maritime rights were intense, incessant and 
superior. All the great disputes on municipal and national law 
evolved by the relative rights of war and peace, colonial trade 
contraband, search, impressment, blockades, embargo, counter- 
vailing restrictions, non-intercourse — he argued before the world, 
and vindicated for his country, with a depth of research, power of 
argument, and force unsurpassed by any state papers. On the 
question of impressment, the most exciting and difficult of all, 
involving direct conflict of British and American law as to sub- 
jection and citizenship, Madison's correspondence with the Ame- 
rican ministers in England, and the English ministers in America, 
excels every other discussion of that subject. Every year public 
sentiment was enlightened and encouraged by his admirable 
logic, and ripened for that appeal to arms which, after exhaust- 
ing forbearance, and not till then, was the last resort against 
such wrongs. In the subsequent correspondence between Mr. 
Webster and Lord Ashburton, the former and his many admirers 
seem to suppose that he brings forward new and striking views 
of this topic. But Madison had preceded and exceeded him in 
every one of them, with the consummate ability of a statesman 
compared to a great lawyer. And while the United States and 
Great Britain were in 1842 controverting the merely revived 
dogmas of search and visitation, as if they were for the first time 
enunciated, Madison's presidential message to Congress in May, 



262 MADISON. [JULY, 1813. 

1813, covered the whole ground as conclusively as comprehen- 
sively. Free ships, free goods, was a principle deemed by him a 
legitimate and demonstrable part of the laws of nations, and the 
best guarantee of permanent maritime peace. Peace and good 
will, equal commerce and international justice, are, according to 
his doctrine, the paramount policy as well as right of states; 
and, beyond Jefferson, who partly yielded the great American 
doctrine of free ships, free goods, Madison maintained their 
conformity with the established laws of nations. When the 
evil of war became unavoidable, after being by all possible 
means averted as long as possible, he thought that it was to be 
mitigated and abridged as much and as soon as possible. With 
these impressions deeply fixed in his conscience and reason, it 
was his fate to be executive chief magistrate of war ; and among 
the torrents of abuse which enemies and opponents showered 
upon him, not one accused him of selfish ambition or arbitrary 
power. The law never lost its supremacy by his administration, 
which is much more than equivalent for the want of military 
talents imputed to him. When the British government resolved 
by the severest trial of that war to assert perpetuity of allegiance 
by the execution of a number of American naturalized citizens 
taken prisoners of war, the crisis found in Madison a champion 
of the American principle, not to be deterred or alarmed by any 
sacrifice. Undertaking chief magistracy bequeathed to him by 
his more salient predecessor with a complication of difficulties, he 
went through the war meekly, as adversaries alleged shrinkingly, 
no doubt with anxious longing for the restoration of peace, but 
without ever yielding a principle to his enemies or a point to his 
adversaries ; leaving the United States, which he found embar- 
rassed and discredited, successful, prosperous, glorious and con- 
tent. A constitution which its opponents pronounced incapable 
of hostilities, under his administration triumphantly bore their 
severest brunt. Checkered by the inevitable vicissitudes of war, 
its trials never disturbed the composure of the commander-in-chief, 
always calm, consistent and conscientious, never much elated by 
victory or depressed by defeat, never once by the utmost emer- 
gencies of war, betrayed into a breach of the constitution. Ex- 
posed to that licentious abuse which leading men in free countries 
with an unshackled press cannot escape, his patience was never 
exhausted; nor his forbearance deprived of dignity by complaint, 



CHAP. VIII.] MADISON. 263 

retort, or self-defence, but in the quiet serenity of rectitude, he 
waited on events with uninterrupted, confidence. At the close 
of one of the sessions of Congress, before the present constitution, 
when Madison was a member, taking leave of a friend, he said 
he should never be in public life again : on his friend's saying 
that he would be in the next Congress, " Not I," replied Madi- 
son ; " I would rather be in an insane hospital." Yet, thence- 
forward, during thirty years, he was never out of public life, 
(though, like all its followers, he felt momentary disgust,) till 
shJty-six years old, when he at last laid down the presidency, 
and withdrew to pass nearly twenty more on his estate in the 
neighbourhood of his birth-place in Virginia, surviving detraction, 
and soon becoming a shrine to which Americans of all parties, 
and respectable foreigners fondly repaired, to enjoy the hospitable 
home of a model for American statesmen. Except a short resi- 
dence at Richmond, in 1829, as a member of ^reconvention assem- 
bled there to reform the constitution of Virginia, or an occasional 
visit to his neighbour, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison hardly left his 
own plantation from the time of his retirement to his death in 
June, 1836. During life he traveled but little, never having seen 
much of the country which he so largely contributed to make one 
nation, nor any part of any other. His sympathies, tastes, habits, 
and preferences were domestic and purely American ; there was 
no European idolatry mixed with them. Hence, perhaps, the ill 
bred of Europe, who visit and decry America, might disparage 
the figure, manners, furniture, equipage and other externals of 
the residence and appearance of this American chief magistrate 
and gentleman, as inferior to their arbitrary standards. Nor need 
we deny the superior splendour of greater wealth or its influence, 
though in matters of taste the most refined of different nations 
disagree. The substantial and elegant hospitalities of Madison's 
house, both on his large estate in Virginia, and in the presidential 
mansion at Washington, consisted with polished life, and might be 
advantageously compared with more sumptuous entertainment. 
Elegance does not consist in opulence, as vulgar persons are apt 
to imagine : otherwise French and Italian excellence in all attrac- 
tions of the table, the drawing-room, the public spectacle, music, 
sculpture and painting, would be eclipsed by what at best is infe- 
rior British imitation of them. At forty-three years of age, Mr. 
Madison married a lady brought up in the strictest self-denials 



264 MADISON. [JULY, 1813. 

of the Quaker sect, to whom frivolous accomplishments, together 
with elegant clothing, were forbidden : yet she proved the graceful 
companion of his elevation, with manners noble and gracious, 
the nicest sense of the most refined good-breeding, and certainly 
better fitted for courts than many of those frequenting them: for 
good manners and refined civilization do not depend on mere 
wealth or mere titular rank. Jefferson and Madison attempted 
to reform the proneness of their countrymen to titles by dropping 
excellency, honourable, and esquire from names. Yet the attempt 
almost ended as it began with them : candid Americans must 
confess that titles and wealth are worshiped by too many in this 
country. 

During Madison's long retirement, company, correspondence, 
agriculture, and the University of Virginia, of which he was re- 
gent, with exercise in the saddle, were his recreations. Like 
Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and all the Virginia gentlemen 
of that day, he was an expert horseman, and addicted to horse- 
back recreations. He was fond of table-talk; and, though tem- 
perate in all things, enjoyed not only wine, but the lively, and 
even the sometimes more than lively freedom it produces. — 
Jefferson, with uncommon colloquial powers, was constitu- 
tionally modest, and would blush at any indelicate allusion. 
Madison, more diffident of opinion, was fond of free chat, and 
rather enjoyed what his instructor would have shrunk from. 
On a visit I paid Mr. Madison, about six weeks before his death, 
I found him extremely weak, so that he never left his chamber, 
and seldom a couch ; but while life was at the lowest ebb, his 
fine mind was bright, memory clear, and conversation delightful. 
Avoiding, with impervious retention, all judgment of men or 
things that might in any way identify him with the politics, the 
parties or the persons of the time, lie conversed without reserve, 
and with surprising intelligence, even subtle discrimination, of 
constitutional or any other open topics ; asserting his long-cher- 
ished midway opinions with unabated attachment. On the 28th 
of June, 1836, he died, at the age of eighty-five. His mother died 
in his house nearly a hundred years old. The President, General 
Jackson, announced Madison's death to Congress by a brief mes- 
sage, that measures might be adopted testifying respect due to the 
memory of one whose life contributed so essentially to the happi- 
ness and glory of his country, and the good of mankind. Mr. 



CHAP. VIII.] MADISON. 265 

Patton, the member from his district, moved the resolution of 
condolence, which was seconded by Mr. Quincy Adams, the only 
surviving ex-president, then a member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, brought together as he said, by emanations from Madi- 
son's mind, to address each other by the endearing appellations 
of countrymen and fellow-citizens. 

What then is the shading of this seeming strain of panegyric? 
No one has been more abused than Madison. But not only did 
it all die away, but died before he died. He was charged with 
subserviency to France, with timidity, incapacity for great deeds, 
with inebriety, and other unworthiness of which the specifications 
are since forgotten. A statement of the multiplied detraction show- 
ered on him, would instruct and console as to the futility of abuse 
without truth, when uttered and registered by licentious presses. 
Retirement and seclusion, death, and time pass amnesty on all that 
is not unpardonable ; while better instincts exalt the praiseworthy 
actions. The evil goes into oblivion. The good is consecrated. 
There exists a remnant of inveterate, respectable federalists, who 
still deny Madison's merits. But the great body of his country- 
men are unanimous in awarding him immortality. Much more 
than Jefferson, he enjoys undivided favour. He was no hero, 
not a man of genius, not remarkable for the talent of personal 
ascendency. But his patriotic services are parcel of the most 
fundamental civil, and the most renowned military grandeur of 
this republic, and his private life without stain or reproach. 



vol. i. — 23 



266 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGN. [APRIL, 1813. 



CHAPTER IX. 

NORTHERN CAMPAIGN.— EUSTIS RESIGNS THE WAR DEPARTMENT.— 
ARMSTRONG APPOINTED SECRETARY OF WAR.— PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 
TO ATTACK KINGSTON.— GENERAL PIKE.— TOWN MEETING AT 
PHILADELPHIA.— GENERALS DEARBORN AND PIKE CAPTURE YORK.— 
PIKE'S DEATH.— INDIAN SCALP IN CANADIAN PARLIAMENT HOUSE.— 
REVOLUTIONARY INDIAN BARBARITIES.— CAPTURE OF FORT GEORGE 
BY THE AMERICANS.— REPULSE OF THE ENGLISH BY GENERAL BROWN 
AT SACKETT'S HARBOUR.— ENORMOUS EXPENSES OF BORDER AND 
LAKE WAR.— GENERALS CHANDLER AND WINDER SURPRISED AND 
CAPTURED BY GENERAL VINCENT AT FORTY MILE CREEK.— COLONEL 
BURN RETREATS.— GENERAL LEWIS ORDERED TO REINFORCE HIM.— 
RECALLED BY GENERAL DEARBORN.— COLONEL BOERSTLER'S SUR- 
RENDER AT THE BEAVER DAMS.— GENERAL DEARBORN REMOVED 
FROM COMMAND OF THE NORTHERN ARMY.— SUCCEEDED AD-INTERIM 
BY GENERAL BOYD.— ORDERED NOT TO ACT OFFENSIVELY.— COOPED 
UP IN FORT GEORGE ALL SUMMER.— GENERAL WILKINSON TAKES 
COMMAND THERE IN SEPTEMBER.— STATE AND NUMBER OF THE 
FORCES AT SACKETT'S HARBOUR, FORT GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN.— 
EXPEDITION AGAINST MONTREAL.— GENERALS ARMSTRONG, WIL- 
KINSON AND HAMPTON.— THEIR PLANS AND FEUDS.— HAMPTON IN- 
VADES CANADA— IS REPULSED IN SEPTEMBER, AND AGAIN IN OCTO- 
BER.— CHAUNCEY GETS COMMAND OF LAKE ONTARIO.— WILKINSON'S 
DESCENT OF THE ST. LAWRENCE TO ATTACK MONTREAL.— DESCRIP- 
TION AND DISASTERS OF THAT VOYAGE.— BRAVE AND SUCCESSFUL 
RESISTANCE OF THE ENGLISH.— BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG.— COR- 
RESPONDENCE BETWEEN HAMPTON AND WILKINSON.— HAMPTON 
REFUSES TO JOIN WILKINSON, WHO ABANDONS THE EXPEDITION- 
PUBLIC OPINION RESPECTING IT.— NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS.— GENE- 
RAL M'CLURE DESTROYS FORT GEORGE, AND RETREATS TO FORT 
NIAGARA.— BURNS QUEENSTOWN.— BRITISH RETALIATE.— SURPRISE 
FORT NIAGARA, AND LAY WASTE WESTERN NEW YORK.— IMPRES- 
SIONS AT WASHINGTON.— BLUE-LIGHTS REPORTED BY DECATUR, AS 
SEEN TO GIVE NOTICE OF HIS MOVEMENTS.— ENGLISH TRIUMPHS IN 
EUROPE, AND AMERICA EMBOLDEN THEIR WARFARE.— DISASTROUS 
CLOSE OF NORTHERN CAMPAIGN IN 1813. 

When General Hull's surrender fell upon the executive at 
Washington, like a thunderbolt, the Secretary of War was of 
course the person most severely scathed. On General Dearborn's 
resignation of the war department, at the close of Jefferson's ad- 
ministration, President Madison conferred it on William Eustis, 



CHAP. IX.] GENERAL ARMSTRONG. 267 

who had represented Boston, in the House of Representatives, 
and was an honest, intelligent, worthy genjtleman, without com- 
manding talents, called upon in the outset of the war, with an 
unprepared country, a divided people, reluctant Congress, and a 
factious senate, for the exercise of talents, which miracles could 
hardly have rendered successful. His sacrifice to public indig- 
nation was deemed indispensable ; not by the president, but by 
members of Congress of his party, particularly the New England 
democrats, of whom a self-created deputation waited on Dr. Eus- 
tis, and, without the slightest hesitancy on his part, prevailed on 
him forthwith manfully to resign. His letter of resignation imme- 
diately submitted to the president, was answered by him in the 
kindest and most soothing manner, that while yielding to the neces- 
sity of their parting, Dr. Eustis would carry with him every assur- 
ance of Mr. Madison's unalterable good will, which was after- 
wards proved by his sending him minister to Holland : as Eustis 
persevered in attachment to Madison, in spite of attempts by the 
disaffected to draw him into opposition. 

The war department was then offered to Crawford, always 
and justly a favourite with Madison, but he had the good sense 
to decline it, as he had no military experience, and though little 
given to fear, apprehensive that he might prove unequal to so 
arduous a task. Many other persons were thought of for the post. 
But, upon the whole, Madison satisfied himself that General 
Armstrong would be the best selection, who was at that time a 
brigadier-general, in command at the city of New York. Madi- 
son did not like him, nor did his confidential secretary Monroe, 
who held Armstrong in aversion. He had been aid to General 
Gates, in the war of the Revolution, and served with some distinc- 
tion ; was the reputed author of the reprobated Newburg letters 
on disbanding the army, married into the Livingston family of 
New York, was President Jefferson's minister to Napoleon, 
whose military and arbitrary government, Jefferson strongly dis- 
approved, and whose injustice to this country Armstrong boldly 
denounced, to the French emperor's great annoyance. General 
Armstrong was rather tall and slender, about fifty years of age 
when secretary of war, thought clearly, acted with decision, and 
was an epigrammatic writer, but indolent. It was said, that like 
several others, he coveted the chief command of the American 
army, with the title of Lieutenant General : and it is possible that 



268 GENERAL PIKE. [JUNE, 1813. 

when he transferred the war department from Washington to 
Sackett's Harbour, in 1813, he may have entertained such aspira- 
tions. If so, they could not have been realized, because Madison 
never would have given him such a place, which, if given by him 
to any one, would probably have been intrusted to Monroe. It 
is but just, however, to Madison, to qualify this mere conjecture 
with the acknowledgment that no man with the executive power 
of appointment, more honestly controlled his personal predilec- 
tions in executing the trust. 

It was General Armstrong's plan, as secretary of the war 
department, that the Canadian campaign of 1813 should begin 
by an attack on Kingston, where the English naval arma- 
ment on Lake Ontario harboured, and the head quarters of the 
army were concentrated. Commodore Chauncey then held 
command of the lake ; we had force enough under General 
Dearborn, near Lake Champlain, at Sackett's Harbour, our 
naval rendezvous, and along the St. Lawrence to Niagara, to 
warrant such an attack, which, with enterprising commanders, 
would have been undertaken and probably succeeded in the 
destruction of the English fleet, if not the capture of Kingston. 
Indeed, a winter invasion in sleighs had been suggested, but 
never seriously contemplated ; an exploit, however feasible and 
striking, beyond the enterprise of those with whom the honour 
of our arms was then held in abeyance. The officer, in that 
region, of most promise, more looked to for achievement than 
any other, was General Pike, whose extremely untoward com- 
mencement at the affair of Odeltown, in November, 1S12, has 
been mentioned. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, of New Jersey, 
was a regular and thorough bred soldier, nearly all his life spent 
in the little army of the United States, and one of the very few 
officers not spoiled by its slow advancement, long service in low 
grades without active duty, or opportunity of actual distinction, 
the degeneracy of mere drill and garrison routine. He entered 
the army a youth when it consisted of only a few hundred men, 
under Washington's presidency. That veteran general, with 
all the executive authority of infant government with difficulty 
sustained it against the western Indians, protected by British 
posts and supplied with British arms, year after year defeating 
our insignificant forces, though commanded by such experienced 
officers as Generals Harmer and Sinclair, till at length one of 



CHAP. IX.] WAR MEETING. 



269 



the heroes of the Revolution, General Wayne, succeeded in 
worsting the savages and intimidating their English supporters 
to the great relief and joy of the whole country. Wayne, Wil- 
kinson, and other officers of those petty campaigns, were wel- 
comed at Philadelphia, then the federal metropolis, as comman- 
ders who had nobly rescued our borders from invasion. Not 
many years before, Washington himself served his apprentice- 
ship with Braddock in similar but yet more deplorable con- 
flict ; and Dr. Franklin, with the epaulettes and commission of 
colonel, sword in hand, was called out to do like duty against 
Indian invaders, alarming the inhabitants of Philadelphia by 
their terrifying incursions. Indian conquest and massacre at 
Wyoming, receding, but fighting step by step, through Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and the far west, 
were forced from extreme east to extreme west, beyond Chicago, 
and driven to the shores of Lake Superior. English blood had 
done it, delighting in aggression and malediction and the hatred 
of different races, adventurous, rapacious by sea and land, ani- 
mated by love of liberty and love of gain, whose enjoyments 
are often ferocious, and recreations the destructive chase, the 
fatiguing journey, the perilous voyage, the storm, the battle, the 
explosion by steam, restless movements, insatiable covetousness, 
the trinodal power, pleasure and impulse of activity, energy, and 
conquest. After serving in frontier garrisons through twenty 
years of Washington's, John Adams', Jefferson's, and Madison's 
administrations, and, at the end of that long period, getting no 
further than a majority, Major Pike began at last to see in the 
war of 1812, some prospects of the more rapid renown he sighed 
for. On the 20th May, 1812, there was a great public meeting at 
Philadelphia, to embolden government, then supposed to be — 
both the executive and legislative, vacillating and apprehensive, 
not only of the English, "but of the federal opposition— to em- 
bolden them to declare war and cast the die. It was a numerous 
and enthusiastic popular meeting held in the State House yard, 
close to the hall in which independence had been declared in 1776, 
a meeting which talked of a second war of independence and 
resistance to British oppression, by maritime wrongs pronounced 
intolerable. William Jones, soon after appointed secretary of the 
navy, having represented Philadelphia in Congress, presided. 

23* 



270 CAPTURE OF YORK. [APRIL, 1813. 

John Binns, editor of the Democratic Press, then the principal 
newspaper of Pennsylvania, was among the most active at that 
meeting. He was the intimate friend and confidential adviser of 
Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania, a state nearly unani- 
mous for the war. Of the twenty-three members of the Pennsyl- 
vania delegation in Congress, during the war, all but one were 
elected to support it, and both the senators. The resolutions for 
war at that town meeting were unanimously adopted with great 
enthusiasm by a large concourse. Near the stage stood Major 
Pike, in a plain dress, intently listening to the proceedings, 
which he seemed to regard as his summons to promotion and 
the glory he had for many years in vain aspired to. 

Within a twelvemonth, Major Pike was a brigadier- general, 
and regarded as one of our best commanders. On the 25th of 
April, 1813, with about sixteen hundred picked troops, Commo- 
dore Chauncey's fleet sailed from Sackett's Harbour, to transport 
Generals Pike and Dearborn, as was supposed towards Kingston. 
On the 27th of that month and year, instead of Kingston, the 
troops were landed about three miles from York, the provincial 
capital of Upper Canada. Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake 
Ontario, with an excellent harbour, contained their dock-yard 
and naval armaments. York or Toronto, so called from an old 
French fort near the western end of the lake, was a more con- 
siderable town than Kingston, but without so good a harbour. 
Commodore Chauncey's ship, the Madison, could not therefore 
approach near enough to fire upon York : but the commodore in 
his boat was constantly at hand, superintending wherever he 
could be of service, while his flag captain, Elliot, with the schoon- 
ers of the squadron, beat up against a gale of head wind, within 
six hundred yards of the town, and covered the landing, effected 
in spite of brave resistance by the English. Mr. McLean, speaker 
of the Canadian assembly, was killed while fighting gallantly as 
a volunteer in the ranks, with a musket on his shoulder; Captain 
McNeal, of the grenadiers, was also killed, and his company 
annihilated. Our troops were headed by Major Forsyth, of North 
Carolina, with his riflemen, a bold and dashing soldier, always 
forward for action, who on this occasion sustained it with great 
spirit for a long time. General Pike headed the attack. General 
Dearborn's well-composed official account of it, said that to Ge- 
neral Pike he had been induced to confide the immediate attack, 



CHAP. IX.] CAPTURE OF YORK. 271 

from a knowledge that it was his wish, and that he would have 
felt mortified had it not been given to him. General SheafT'e, says 
the same letter, commanded the British troops in person, collected 
in a wood near where the head wind compelled ours to land, suf- 
fering much, says Christie, from a galling fire. The Americans, 
however, Christie adds, accomplished their landing, and compelled 
the British to retire with loss, after a desperate contest ; and retreat 
to their works. The Americans formed under Pike where they 
landed, and pushed through the woods, carrying the first redoubt 
' by assault, and were moving upon the principal entrenchment, 
when the magazine house was blown up with terrible explosion 
and slaughter, destroying between one and two hundred of our 
men, and some of theirs. In this magazine there was a much 
larger quantity of powder than for the defence of the place. The 
explosion was tremendous ; not only scattering destruction about 
where it took place, but affecting even the American vessels on 
the lake, which covered the landing of our men. Both General 
Pike's aids were killed: as Montgomery and his two aids fell 
at Quebec. The English commander, Sheaffe, said to be a Bos- 
tonian by birth, denied this vile stratagem, alleging the death of 
several of the English, as proof that it was merely accidental. — 
But Christie is explicit in confession of it. The stones and rub- 
bish were thrown as far as the decks of our vessels near the 
shore, and the water shocked as with an earthquake. Pike was 
literally stoned to death, after victory bravely won : his breast 
and sides were crushed, and he lingered in great agony till he 
expired. Just as he was lifted from the ground, hearing a shout, 
he inquired what it was for. An American Serjeant near him 
answered, the British union jack is coming down, the stars and 
stripes are going up on the fortifications. He was revived by 
this ; and our men, necessarily thrown into some confusion by the 
destructive explosion, were immediately brought to order, by 
Colonel Cromwell Pearce, of the 16th regiment of infantry, on 
whom, by Pike's fall, the command devolved. Carried on board 
the commodore's ship, General Pike was laid on a matress, asked 
for the British captured flag to be placed under his head, and in 
a few hours, nobly breathed his last upon it without a sigh. His 
heroic death the 27th of April, Captain Lawrence's, after the loss 
of the frigate Chesapeake, on the first of June, Lieutenant Wil- 
liam Burro wes' on the deck of the schooner Enterprise, while 



272 CAPTURE OF YORK. [APRIL, 1813. 

capturing the brig Boxer, on the first of September, and General 
Covington's the 10th of November, at the battle of Williamsburg, 
that year, were events which made great sensation ; one and all, 
they were impressive instances of that noble patriotism which 
elevates men and corroborates nations. Pike and Covington, at 
the head of their troops, Lawrence and Burrowes on the decks 
of vessels of war, self-sacrificed to their country by noble deaths, 
were among the first and greatest contributors to the national 
power and long-enjoyed prosperity of the United States. For in 
vain is peace solicited and cultivated without aptitude for war. 
Effort, hardship, exploit, are national as well as individual wages 
of repose and respect. 

General Dearborn let the English General Sheaffe escape 
with the regular troops, who made good their retreat, when, if 
either Pike or Dearborn had been present, the whole of them 
might and should have been taken prisoners. Before the attack 
Pike urged Dearborn, and he consented to let Pike command, 
and the commander-in-chief remained three miles off, on board 
Commodore Chauncey's ship, the Madison. His official dispatch 
reported that the attack was within his view : which must have 
been a distant and, for all the purposes of assistance or counsel, 
useless view. The consequence of his absence was that, by 
by Pike's fall, the command devolved on Colonel Pearce, a brave 
officer, but uninformed as he was, of the plan of operations, he 
thought proper, after rallying the troops from the momentary 
effect of the explosion, to send for General Dearborn, before 
whose arrival at the scene of action, Sheaffe, with his soldiers, 
had effected their escape, leaving, says Dearborn's report of the 
affair, the commanding officer of the militia to make the best 
terms he could. By the capitulation then agreed upon between 
that officer, Colonel Chewitt, and Lieutenant-Colonel George E. 
Mitchell, Major Samuel Conner, General Dearborn's aid, Major 
William King, and Lieutenant Elliott of the navy, some hun- 
dred Canadian militia, most of them natives of the United States, 
were surrendered, but paroled on the spot. A large quantity of 
stores were taken, which, soon after, by another mistake, were 
burned at Sackett's Harbour, and a large vessel on the stocks 
was reduced to ashes at York. But, excepting these hardly 
equivalents for our loss, the account of that day was 300 Ameri- 
cans lost for 500 of the enemy, not many killed, the rest wounded 



CHAP. IX.] INDIAN ALLIANCE. 273 

or taken. With the English general's musical snuff-box, which 
was an object of much attention to some of our officers, and the 
scalp which Major Forsyth found suspended over the speaker's 
chair, in the parliament house, we gained but barren honour by 
the capture of York, of which no permanent possession was taken. 
After two or three days spent there embarking the booty, among 
which there was a quantity of wine, Chauncey's squadron re- 
shipped the troops, and left York with the scalp taken as sus- 
pended, with the mace of the sergeant-at-arms, near the speak- 
er's chair (killed in the action) in the parliament house of the 
provincial legislature. This atrocious ornament of such a place 
was sent to the secretary of war, General Armstrong, who re- 
fused to receive or suffer it to remain in his cabinet. The fact of 
its discovery and where found, were certified by the following 
official dispatch: — 

" United States Ship Madison, Sackett's Harbour, 

4th June, 1S13. 

" Sir : I have the honour to present to you, by the hands of 
Lieutenant Dudley, the British standard taken at York on the 
27th April last, accompanied by the mace over which hung a 
human scalp. These articles were taken from the parliament 
house by one of my officers and presented to me. The scalp I 
caused to be presented to General Dearborn, who, I believe, still 
has it in his possession. I also send, by the same gentleman, 
one of the British flags taken at Fort George on the 27th May. 

" I have the honour to be, very respectfully, sir, your most 
obedient humble servant, 

"ISAAC CHAUNCEY. 

" Honourable Wm. Jones, 

"Secretary of the Navy, Washington" 

In the Prince Regent of Great Britain's formal manifesto to 
the world of the causes of war, and vindication of it from what 
that authentic document denies as American misrepresentations, 
there is a peremptory denial of reiterated complaints of this 
country, that England instigated the Indians to inhuman war- 
fare. Proof of the contrary, that manifesto averred, had been 
offered by the English minister, Foster, to our government, and 
of the opposite policy uniformly pursued by Great Britain. Yet 



274 INDIAN ALLIES. [1783. 

the Canadian parliament, taken with the scalp, was far from 
being the only one of numerous convictions of monstrous and 
unnatural inhumanity, solemnly denied by the British govern- 
ment. 

English subornation of the Indians to exercise their barbarous 
brutalities on the Americans were the chief reliance and most 
effectual arm of Great Britain, throughout both the first and the 
second wars, waged by her for subjugation of the United States. 
That unnatural inhumanity fomented evil and incurable animo- 
sity between the white and red races which have caused the 
Indians to be nearly exterminated. In both those wars, Eng- 
land had a greater number of Indians in arms than Europeans 
employed against the Americans. Subjoined is an account of 
the Indian nations employed by the British in the revolutionary 
war, with the number of warriors attached to each nation, as 
published at Philadelphia in August, 17S3, by Captain Dalton, 
superintendent of Indian affairs, viz.: — 



Choctaws 


600 


Onondagas 


300 


Chickasaws 


400 


Cayugas 


230 


Cherokees 


500 


Jensckaws (Senecas) 


400 


Creeks 


700 


Sacs and Sothuse 


1300 


Plankishaws 


400 


Putawawtawmaws 


400 


Oniactmaws 


300 


Tula win 


150 


Kickapoos 


500 


Muskulthe (or nation 


of 


Munseys 


150 


fire) 


250 


Delawares 


500 


Reimes or Foxes 


300 


Shawanaws 


300 


Puyon 


350 


Mohickons 


60 


Sokkie 


450 


Uchipweys 


3000 


Abinokkin or the St. 




Ottaways 


300 


Lawrence 


200 


Mohawks 


300 








Oneidas 


150 


Warriors 


12,690 


Tuscaroras 


200 







Indisputable proof abounds to convict British agents and 
military officers of that guilt. The defeat and flight of General 
Proctor's army on the 5th October, 1S13, placed in the posses- 
sion of the American commander, the correspondence and papers 
of the British officers. Selected from the documents which 



CHAP. IX.] INDIAN ALLIES. 275 

were obtained upon that occasion, the contents of a few letters 
characterize the whole mass. In these letters, written by Mr. 
McKee, the British agent, to Colonel England, the commander 
of the British troops, superscribed " on his Majesty's service," 
and dated during the months of July and August, 1794, the 
period of General Wayne's successful expedition against the 
Indians, it appears that the scalps taken by the Indians were 
sent to the British establishment at the rapids of the Miami ; 
that the hostile operations of the Indians were concerted with 
the British agents and officers; that when certain tribes of 
Indians, " having completed the belts they carried with scalps 
and prisoners, and being without provisions, resolved on going 
home, it was lamented that his majesty's posts would derive no 
security from the late great influx of Indians into that part of 
the country, should they persist in their determination of return- 
ing so soon;" that "the British agents were immediately to 
hold a council at the Glaze, in order to try if they could prevail 
on the Lake Indians to remain, but that without provisions and 
ammunition being sent to that place, it was conceived to be 
extremely difficult to keep them together;" and " that Colonel 
England was making great exertions to supply the Indians with 
provisions." The language of the correspondence becomes at 
length so plain and direct that it is impossible to avoid the con- 
clusion of a governmental agency on the part of Great Britain, 
in advising, aiding and conducting the Indian war, while she 
professed friendship and peace towards the United States. "Scouts 
are sent (says Mr. McKee to Colonel England), to view the situa- 
tion of the American army, and we now muster one thousand 
Indians. All the Lake Indians from Ingana downwards, should 
not lose one moment in joining their brethren, as every accession 
of strength is an addition to their spirits." And again : " I have 
been employed several days in endeavouring to fix the Indians, 
who have been driven from their villages and cornfields, between 
the fort and the bay. Swan eek is generally agreed upon, 
and will be a very convenient place for the delivery of provi- 
sions," &c. Whether, under the various proofs of the British 
agency in exciting Indian hostilities against the United States, 
in a time of peace, presented in the course of the present narra- 
tive, the prince regent's declaration, that " before the war began 
a policy the most opposite had been uniformly pursued," by the 



276 INDIAN ALLIES. [1782. 

British government, is to be ascribed to a want of information, 
or a want of candour, the American government is not disposed 
more particularly to investigate, says Dallas's exposition of the 
causes and character of the war, from which this part of my 
statement comes. At all times, in war and in peace, from the 
commencement of hostilities, in 1776, to the peace of 1783, from 
that time throughout the period of withholding the western posts, 
in violation of that treaty and the reiterated expostulations of 
President Washington ; throughout the war of 1812 to the treaty 
of Ghent, which was nearly frustrated by the English commis- 
sioners insisting on Indian reservations, jurisdiction and sove- 
reignty; at all times this odious interference and unworthy 
reliance have never ceased. Further proof of a character so 
disgusting as to seem incredible, is derived from the English 
respectable publication, in London, by Almon, of authentic state 
papers, as follows : — 

Extract of a letter from Captain Gerrish, of the New England 
militia, dated Albany, March 7tb : — 

" The peltry taken in the expedition will, you see, amount to 
a good deal of money. The possession of this booty at first gave 
us pleasure ; but we were struck with horror to find among the 
packages, eight large ones containing scalps of our unfortunate 
country folks, takenin the three last years by the Seneca Indians, 
from the inhabitants of the frontiers of New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania and Virginia, and sent by them as a present to 
Colonel Haldimand, Governor of Canada, in order to be by him 
transmitted to England ; they were accompanied by the following 
curious letter to that gentleman : 

"Tioga, January 3d, 1782. 
" May it please your excellency — 

"At the request of the Seneca chiefs, I herewith send to your 
excellency, under the care of James Boyd, eight packages of 
scalps, cured, dried, hooped and painted, with all the Indian tri- 
umphal marks, of which the following is invoice and explana- 
tion : 

" No. 1. — Containing 43 scalps of Congress soldiers, killed in 
different skirmishes ; these are stretched on black hoops, 4 inch 
diameter, the inside of the skin painted red, with a small black 
spot, to note their being killed with bullets ; also, 62 of farmers, 



CHAP. IX.] INDIAN ALLIANCE. 277 

killed in their houses; the hoops painted red, the skin painted 
brown, and marked with a hoe, a black circle all around, to de- 
note their being surprised in the night, and a black hatchet in the 
middle, signifying their being killed with that weapon. 

"No. 2. — Containing 98 of farmers killed in their houses : hoops 
red, figure of a hoe to mark their profession, great white circle 
and sun, to show they were surprised in the day time, a little red 
foot, to show they stood upon their defence, and died fighting for 
their lives and families. 

" No. 3. — Containing 97 of farmers : hoops green, to show they 
were killed in the fields ; a large white circle, with a little round 
mark on it, for the sun, to show it was in the day time ; black 
bullet mark on some, a hatchet on others. 

"No. 4. — Containing 102 of farmers, mixed of several of the 
marks above, only 18 marked with a little yellow flame, to denote 
their being of prisoners burnt alive, after being scalped, their nails 
pulled out by the roots, and other torments : one of these latter, 
supposed to be an American clergyman, his hand being fixed to 
the hoop of his scalp. Most of the farmers appear by the hair 
to have been young or middle aged men, there being but 67 
very gray heads among them all, which makes the service more 
essential. 

" No. 5. — Containing 88 scalps of women ; hair long, braided 
in the Indian fashion, to show they were mothers ; hoops blue, 
skin yellow ground, with little red tad-poles, to represent by way 
of triumph, the tears or grief occasioned to their relations ; a black 
scalping knife or hatchet at the bottom, to mark their being killed 
by those instruments; 17 others, hair very gray, black hoops, 
plain brown colour; no mark but the short club or coup-tete, to 
show they were knocked down dead, or had their brains beat out. 

"No. 6. — Containing 190 boys' scalps of various ages: small 
green hoops, whitish ground on the skin, with red scars in the 
middle, and black marks, knife, hatchet or club, as their death 
happened. 

" No. 7. — Containing 211 girls' scalps, big and little : small yel- 
low hoops, white ground ; tears, hatchet, club, scalping knife, &c. 

" No. 8. — This package-is a mixture of all the varieties above 
mentioned, to the number of 122, with a box of birch bark, con- 
taining 29 little infants' scalps, of various sizes ; small white hoops, 
VOL. I. — 24 



278 INDIAN ALLIANCE. [1782. 

white ground, no tears, and only a little black knife in the middle, 
to show they were ripped out of their mothers' bellies. 

" With these packs, the chiefs send to your excellency the fol- 
lowing speech, delivered by Corniogatchie in council, interpreted 
by the elder Moore, the trader, and taken down by me in writing. 

"' Father. We send you herewith many scalps, that you may 
see we are not idle friends. (A blue belt.) 

" ' Father. We wish you to send three scalps over the water to 
the great King, that he may regard them, and be refreshed, and 
that he may see our faithfulness in destroying his enemies, and be 
convinced that his presents have not been made to an ungrateful 
people. (A blue and while belt with red tassels.) 

" < Father. Attend to what I am now going to say, it is a mat- 
ter of much weight. The Great King's enemies are many, and 
they grow fast in numbers. They were formerly like young 
panthers, they could neither bite nor scratch, we could play with 
them safely, we feared nothing they could do to us. But now 
their bodies have become as big as the elk, and strong as the buf- 
falo; they have also got great and sharp claws. They have 
driven us out of our country for taking part in your quarrel: we 
expect the Great King will give us another country, that our 
children may live after us, and be his friends and children as we 
are. Say this for us to our Great King ; to enforce it, give this 
belt. (A great white belt with blue tassels.) 

" '■Father. We have only to say further, that your traders exact 
more than ever for their goods, and our hunting is lessened by 
the war, so that we have fewer skins to give for them. This 
ruins us: think of some remedy — we are poor; and you have 
plenty of everything; we know you will send us powder and 
guns, and knives and hatchets ; but we also want shirts and 
blankets. (A little white belt.') 

" I do not doubt but that your excellency will think it proper 
to give some further encouragement to those honest people. The 
high prices they complain of, are the necessary effect of the war. 

" Whatever presents may be sent for them through my hands, 
shall be distributed with prudence and fidelity. I have the 
honour of being your excellency's most obedient and most hum- 
ble servant, 

"JAMES CRAWFURD." 




CHAP. IX.] SIR JAMES YEO. 279 

With such memorials in print, of the use made by England of the 
American Indians in one war, it is no wonder that their barbari- 
ties were for a long time the most potent English offensive means 
in another. Dread of the scalping knife and tomahawk did more 
to save Canada for England, than the equivocal loyalty of her 
Canadian subjects, the skill, valou*, and admirable tactics of her 
best officers and soldiers. To dread of the savages alone Hull 
gave way when he first faltered. That dread took him back from 
Sandwich to Detroit; overcame him to surrender Detroit, much 
more than hostile attack by civilized men in arms. They do 
but capture, wound, or kill enemies. But Indians torture, muti- 
late, murder, put to death with aggravations, far worse than mere 
homicide. Dread of the Indians struck the militia with panic, 
when they dared not pass over to rescue their countrymen at 
Queenstown. Dread of them induced Colonel Boerstler to 
surrender, as we shall soon see, to an inferior force which he 
might have resisted. Dread of the Indians multiplied their 
numbers and powers so fearfully to American recollections, 
that Indian barbarities were by far the most formidable of Eng- 
lish means of hostility against the United States. 

Attacking York instead of Kingston was a departure from the 
plan of the secretary of war which had no good results. Dear- 
born was easily persuaded by Chauncey, who expected, by de- 
stroyingor taking alargeEnglish vessel at York,tosecure the naval 
command of the lake. But that vessel had left York before the 
arrival of our troops: and, instead of rendering Chauncey the 
strongest, gave the superiority to a new British commander, Sir 
James Lucas Yeo, transferred from his frigate, the Southampton, 
on the West India station, and arriving early in May at Kingston 
with 450 seamen and several naval officers. Yeo proved a pru- 
dent, skilful and able commander, who at least kept pace with our 
commodore in the race of ship-building, prosecuted at Sackett's 
Harbour and Kingston, and, after dividing the command of the lake 
with Chauncey all summer, at last had the good fortune to save 
the English fleet from destruction by flight when, perhaps, Chaun- 
cey might have destroyed it by boldness. General Armstrong 
preferred beginning at Kingston, at the east end of Lake Ontario, 
instead of York and Fort George at the west, where General 
Dearborn and Commodore Chauncey made their first assault. 
After stripping York of the booty, soon to be sacrificed at Sack- 



280 FORT GEORGE. [MAY, 1813. 

ett's Harbour, Channcey landed Dearborn with his troops near 
JFort George, returning with his captured stores to Sackett's 
Harbour, thence to transport General Chandler's brigade and 
Colonel McComb's regiment to the Niagara to serve with Dear- 
born in capturing Fort George. 

A month of precious time was consumed before the attack of 
Fort George, and then again the commander-in-chief remained 
on board a vessel, while his army, 6000 strong, attacked and 
carried that place. Again the defeated enemy was permitted to 
escape. The capture of Fort George was the first extensive 
military operation of-the war, though expended upon an insig- 
nificant object : a combined assault, as at York, by army and. 
navy, in which Generals Lewis, Chandler, Boyd, and Winder 
were with their brigades, Colonels Scott and McComb with their 
regiments, and many other meritorious officers of the army ; toge- 
ther with Commodore Channcey, Captain Perry, and Lieutenant 
Elliott, with other naval officers. Courage, enterprise and skill 
were displayed, without adequate combination or execution. 
Vincent, the British general, after stout resistance, completely 
defeated, with considerable loss, effected his retreat, as Sheaffe 
had done from York, probably without Dearborn's even knowing 
it, for he stayed on ship-board, till it was too late to prevent Vin- 
cent and Sheaffe shaking hands in the mountain passes of that 
region, where they were enabled to employ the British soldiers 
which ours might have captured — to employ them in attacking, 
defeating and capturing ours during all the rest of that year of 
discomfitures. 

By singular coincidence, within forty-eight hours of the cap- 
ture of Fort George, the Governor-General Prevost, with Com- 
modore Yeo, Adjutant-General Baynes, and about 1000 soldiers, 
undertook to retaliate on Sackett's Harbour for our attack on 
York. Their selection of our naval rendezvous showed that 
we should have selected theirs for attack. The inconsiderable 
force they led from theirs proved that with the force we misapplied, 
in the useless capture of Fort George, as it turned out to be, we 
should have struck a blow with 6000 men at Kingston, which 
might have been fatal to British power in Canada, and opened a 
way to Montreal in June, instead of the wretched attempt Wil- 
kinson and Hampton made to get there in November. The 
genius of mismanagement seemed to lead our armies for the 



CHAP. IX.] SACKETT'S HARBOUR. 281 

conquest of Canada. Prevost and Yeo, with ships, boats, and 
other means of assault, except adequate artillery, proceeded 
from Kingston to Sackett's Harbour, while Dearborn and Chaun- 
cey were on the Niagara, and on the 29th May, opened the 
English campaign with a defeat. The American force there 
was extremely weak. At first the English had some success, 
driving in the militia and exciting such alarm that a naval officer 
burned all the stores captured at York, and our ship, the General 
Pike, on the stocks, was in danger. But the few regular troops 
at the place, headed by General Jacob Brown, a neighbouring 
militia officer, requested by the regular officers to take command, 
repulsed Baynes and compelled the British to retreat, after losing 
a good many men, whom they left both dead and wounded to 
the care of their enemies, which was a common thing with them 
during the war. General Brown, no soldier by profession, was 
one of those natural offsprings of war, who seem born to excel 
in it, a man stout of person, strong of nerve, bold, brave, saga- 
cious, full of resource, indefatigable, whose exploits, after this 
introduction to them, were among the most brilliant of that war. 
His own account of his first essay under fire arms, short and 
characteristic, deserves incorporation entire with this narrative. 

"May 29/A, 1813. 
" We were attacked at the dawn of this day by a British regu- 
lar force of at least 900 men, most probably 1200. They made 
their landing at Horse Island. The enemy's fleet consisted of 
two ships and four schooners, and thirty large open boats. We 
are completely victorious. The enemy lost a considerable num- 
ber of,killed and wounded, on the field, among the number 
several officers of distinction. After having re-embarked, they 
sent me a flag desiring to have their killed and wounded 
attended to. I made them satisfied on that subject. Americans 
ivill be distinguished for humanity and bravery. Our loss is 
not numerous, but serious from the great worth of those who 
have fallen. Colonel Mills was shot dead at the commencement 
of the action ; and Colonel Backus, of the first regiment of light 
dragoons, nobly fell at the head of his regiment, as victory was 
declaring for us. I will not presume to praise this regiment; 
their gallant conduct on this day merits much more than praise. 
The new ship, and Commodore Chauncey's prize, the Duke of 

24* 



282 GENERAL BROWN. [MAY, 1813. 

Gloucester, are safe in Sackett's Harbour. Sir George Prevost 
landed and commanded in person — Sir James Yeo commanded 
the enemy's fleet. 

" In haste, yours, &c, 

"JACOB BROWN." 

General Brown was a Pennsylvania Quaker, a village school- 
master not far from Philadelphia ; and soon rose, like Greene 
in the war of the Revolution, to military eminence ; two men 
of genius for military affairs, only second, if that, to the first 
military commanders of this country ; Greene and Brown, of 
whom it was jocularly said that both proved true blue. That 
roving spirit of frontier adventure which naturally grows from 
the American mother earth, dislodging so many enterprising men 
from the homes of their nativity, took Brown to the borders of 
Canada. The clouds of disrepute through which nearly all men 
must make their way to distinction, discredited him as having 
acquired his familiarity with that region as a contrabandist, before 
his superior talents were displayed there as a warrior. If so, 
illicit gain by such means may be more ignoble, but is it more 
unwarrantable than extensive pillage and depredation such as 
those practised who perhaps first uttered this disparagement of 
a brave man, to be disseminated by the enemies of his country? 

The British repulse at Sackett's Harbour was the last Ameri- 
can success in 1813, on Lake Ontario or the St. Lawrence, 
where the enemy's good fortune afterwards never failed, except 
in Chauncey's partial success on the lake. On the land the Eng- 
lish defence of Canada was conducted with much more courage, 
enterprize and ability than American attempts at invasion, which 
failed after a long series of delays and reverses. The most con- 
siderable expedition undertaken during the war, with an army 
of at least 10,000 or 12,000 regular troops, led by veteran com- 
manders, proved an abortion as discreditable as Hull's, with 
militia, the year before. Not only so, but in all the preliminary 
engagements, our troops were worsted ; and the campaign of 
that quarter ended in disgraceful and terrible retaliation in west 
New York. 

Small border warfare, the worst of all, most wasteful of men, 
money and character, was our resort during two, for the most 
part disastrous years. Nowhere in the world were such costly 



CHAP. IX.] WAR CHARGES. 283 

and fruitless hostilities, as those carried on over many hundreds 
of miles from the swamps and wildernesses of Michigan to 
the mountain gorges of Canada. Armstrong insisted that if 
his plan had not been departed from, success would have fol- 
lowed. But even though Kingston had been attacked, as he de- 
sired, instead of York and George, and attacked early in the 
spring, or even in the winter, the whole plan of operations was 
radically wrong. In IS 12 England had not five thousand reli- 
able troops in both the Canadas, with inconsiderable numbers 
fartber north east. We recruited armies to be wasted on the 
borders of the lakes, built and equipped fleets upon them, at 
monstrous expense, to wage small, border war. The sum ex- 
pended in building vessels for Lake Ontario was nearly two 
millions of dollars, $1,869,011 45; that expended on Lake Erie 
$106,603,16: and that expended on Lake Champlain, $296,- 
320 32 : almost two millions and a half for mere ship building. 
The expenditures for the conquest of the lakes would have paid 
for the transportation of a large army from Maine to Halifax. 

The waste of money was enormous. It was estimated that it 
cost a thousand dollars for every cannon conveyed to Sackett's 
harbour. The flour for Harrison's army was said to cost a hun- 
dred dollars per barrel. The multiplied incidental but inevi- 
table charges of travel over wilderness regions without roads, 
required, among other things, thousands of pack horses, each 
of which could carry only half a barrel of provisions, and must 
be attended by trains of other horses, with forage for those 
laden with provisions. The distances were hundreds of miles 
over trackless deserts. Few horses survived more than one trip ; 
many sunk under one. Of 4000 pack horses to supply Harrison's 
small army, but 800 were alive after the winter of 1812, '13. Large 
quantities of flour were buried in mud and snow, from inability 
to carry it any farther: large quantities damaged when arrived 
at the place of destination. Two-thirds of that deposited at Fort 
Meigs was spoiled and unfit for use. Fluctuations and increase 
of prices were so great, that many contractors were ruined, and it 
became necessary to purchase of other persons, when disappointed 
of regular supplies by contractors. The enemy's sufferings from 
war in Canada were still greater. Commissioners were appointed 
by government there, as in times of dearth in Europe, to say how 



284 WAR CHARGES. [JULY, 1813. 

much food a family should be allowed. Flour was thirty dollars 
a barrel at Kingston. There was a great scarcity of salt, in fact 
hardly any. It was sold for as much as a dollar per quart, Canada 
before the war having been supplied with salt from the United 
States. The English forces were on shorter allowance than the 
American, whose unwholesome and scanty meat was often cattle 
killed to prevent their starving to death. The waste of life in 
the American armies was also great from want of competent 
surgeons, instruments and medicines, and from the diseases caused 
by all these privations in insalubrious regions. 

Instead of protracted encampment, any active employment, 
winter or summer, would have saved life, health, treasure, cha- 
racter, economized and increased all the resources and energies of 
war. Stagnation in camps and garrisons, on frontiers, bred disease, 
discontent, desertion, thinned the numbers, soured the tempers, 
demoralized both men and officers. ' As many as six soldiers 
were shot in one day at one place for desertion. The English 
system of what is called voluntary enlistment, that is inveigling 
dissatisfied, worthless or intoxicated men to enlist, and then dis- 
ciplining them by cruel and degrading corporal punishments, 
lashing them into good behaviour, was the only method of re- 
plenishing and marshaling our continually wasting armies. The 
commissariat, the provisions, the clothing were bad : the medi- 
cal department worse. The want of surgical instruments, of 
skill and knowledge in this essential comfort of the soldier, was 
deplorable. The cost of ship building on the lakes, an incessant 
struggle between Sackett's harbour and Kingston, Erie and 
Maiden, Plattsburg and its rival ship yard ; the cost of conveying 
artillery and other bulky materials from distant places ; the trans- 
portation of supplies by land, on pack horses, through hundreds 
of miles of wilderness or unpeopled regions, all these changes were 
enormous. Immense expenditures of public money for these pur- 
poses were irresistible temptations to those claiming commissions 
on funds spent through their agency, to make unjust charges, 
undue outlays, and ruinous delays. From May till November, 
1S13, there was no movement on Lake Ontario. The many thou- 
sand men near Fort George, commanded first by Dearborn, finally 
by Wilkinson, several thousand more commanded by Hampton at 
Plattsburg, were all stationary from May till October. During 



CHAP. IX.] GENERALS WINDER AND CHANDLER. 285 

most of this period of inaction, Chauncey was in port with his 
fleet, ship building at Sackett's harbour. After Dearborn was 
removed from command, our isolated conquest, Fort George, was 
left useless in command of General Boyd till General Wilkinson 
got there, which was not till the 4th of September. Boyd mean- 
time was ordered to undertake no offensive operations. Attempts 
to master the lakes by operations on their shores and waters con- 
sumed two years, which, as was afterwards thought, might have 
been better employed by an expedition elsewhere. Hostilities, 
begun wrong in 1S12 and wrongly persevered in through 1813, 
as wrong beginnings are apt to be pursued, kept our armies and 
fleets either unemployed or misemployed around and upon the 
five lakes, Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario and Champlain, at 
great loss of labour and character, exhausting national patience, 
when less force and funds might have carried the war to strike 
a bold and fatal blow at the root of the territorial and maritime 
power of Great Britain in America. 

After the capture of Fort George, General Dearborn landed, 
and next day ordered Vincent to be pursued when it was too 
late. He was unwell, suffering, as many of our officers and sol- 
diers did, with diseases prevalent in the army, which accounts 
in part for his inactivity. Commodore Chauncey was in Sack- 
ett's harbour most of the summer, if I am not mistaken, also ill. 
General Dearborn, thus deprived of the fleet, which he deemed 
necessary for pursuit of the enemy, nevertheless detached General 
Winder, a zealous and active officer', with a small brigade in 
pursuit of Vincent, who had posted himself at Burlington heights. 
Finding his force inadequate, Winder sent back for reinforcement, 
which Dearborn gave him in Chandler's brigade on the 3d of June. 
By this, the American force commanded by Chandler was about 
1300 men, the British under Vincent some S00, only a few miles 
off, so that it was impossible for them to escape, if our inexpe- 
rienced general had not first adjourned the attack till another day, 
and then pitched his camp for the night in a careless, and exposed 
manner. The English general discoveringthis, resolved on the first 
principle of military wisdom to attack rather than be attacked. 
At midnight he surprised and took our picquet guard, and by 
means of the demonstration of a false attack, concentrated his 
force upon a real one. It was led by Lieutenant Colonel Harvey, 
the officer whom we long after knew as Sir John Harvey, 



286 BATTLE AT FORTY-MILE CREEK. [JUNE, 1813. 

Governor of New Brunswick, negotiating with General Scott to 
prevent the troubles in Maine, when there is reason to believe the 
English would have forcibly occupied the ground afterwards ceded 
to them by treaty, had not General Harvey found the militia of 
Maine too numerous and well posted to be attacked by his infe- 
rior force. At Forty Mile creek, on the 3d of June, 1813, Har- 
vey gallantly assaulted the American centre in the dark, took 
some of our cannon, and both our unlucky generals, Chandler 
and Winder. Their encampment was confounded by a surprise, 
which nevertheless their officers beat ofT, all behaving well, and 
many of the young officers, Hindman, Towson, Thomas Biddle 
and others displaying the ardour which wanted only occasion and 
good commanders. In the confusion of the night, the English 
commander Vincent lost his way and wandered some distance off, 
where he was found next day, without sword or hat. But 
Generals Chandler and Winder both prisoners, the army was 
left, as at York, without a commander acquainted with the plans 
of the general or the grounds of its predicament. The com- 
mand by seniority fell on Colonel James Burn, who was there 
without a colonel's regular accompaniment, his own regiment, 
only a small part of which was with him ; he being in fact a 
volunteer in the campaign. He resorted to a council of war with 
some of the other commanding officers : and when the British 
force was not more than half of his, and they had suffered more 
in the action, so that attacking them would have probably recap- 
tured our generals with General Vincent too, and most of his 
bold followers, the untoward determination of Colonel Burn's 
council was not to renew the attack, but fall back and wait for 
further orders. To that bold attack of the English, and our 
lamentable diffidence, Christie with some reason ascribes the res- 
cue of Canada, which we lost by the moral influences and un- 
fortunate consequences of that small check. Colonel Burn, who, 
under the influence of an evil star, which then seemed to predomi- 
nate against us, committed that mistake, by advice of his officers, 
was a South Carolina gentleman of fortune, educated, and having 
spent many years in Europe. He commanded a troop of horse in 
the army raised against France in 1798,and was appointed colonel 
of one of the two regiments of cavalry raised for the war of 1S12 : 
a fine horseman, and intrepid soldier, who that night, as always, 
proved his cool and unquestionable self-possession in battle. But 



CHAP. IX.] BOERSTLER'S CAPTURE. 287 

he lacked what perhaps less courageous men would have shown 
in his exigency, fearlessness of responsibility : and fell back when 
a bold advance would probably have gained him a brigade, with 
the applause of his country and his own confidence. In like 
manner, Lieutenant Colonel Harvey, having lost his commander, 
drew off the English troops and retreated, without waiting even 
to carry off his wounded. Both these extemporaneous com- 
manders, after bravely fighting the battle, seemed afraid to con- 
tinue it : Harvey, with his inferior force, rightly enough probably; 
but Burn, who had taken one hundred of the English, most 
unhappily for himself and the character of American arms. 

As soon as Dearborn was informed of this check, he sent for- 
ward General Morgan Lewis with more troops, to join Burn, 
and bring Vincent to action, which Lewis was well disposed for. 
But some English vessels of war just at that time hove in sight 
on the lake, near our positions, and Dearborn ordered Lewis to 
return to Fort George. During another fortnight of his inaction 
there, the English commanders had time to station troops along 
the passes from Queenstown to York, in which General Vincent 
and Colonel Bishopp were indefatigable. At last, on the 23d of 
June, 1813, the final mishap of our campaign that summer in 
Canada occurred. Colonel Charles Boerstler, then lately promoted 
to the command of the fourteenth regiment of infantry, was 
permitted to take six hundred men to a considerable distance, 
contrary to obvious injunctions of prudence, six hundred men 
out of reach of support, to destroy a British lodgment at some dis- 
tance ; and arrived on the 24th of June, 1813, within two miles of 
the Beaver dams, some seventeen miies from Dearborn at Fort 
George. Boerstler, when about to attack a stonehouse in which 
Colonel Bishopp was entrenched, was suddenly beset by between 
five and six hundred Indians, on one side, and by a small party 
of English under Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, on the other. After 
fighting a good while, alarmed by threats of the savages, and 
deluded by offers of capitulation, out of reach of succour, Boerst- 
ler, with tears in his eyes, surrendered his whole detachment. 

Congress had been in session a month when this occurred, the 
climax of continual tidings of mismanagement and misfortune. 
On the 6th of July, 1813, therefore, when news of Boerstler's sur- 
render came, after a short accidental communion of regret, and 



288 GENERAL DEARBORN. [JULY, 1813. 

impatience in the lobby of the House of Representatives with 
the speaker and General Ringgold, of Maryland, I was deputed 
a volunteer to wait on the president, and request General Dear- 
born's removal ffom a command which so far had been so un- 
fortunate. The president was ill abed when 1 called : but pro- 
mised an early answer, which soon followed me to the capitol, 
in a message from Mr. Monroe, that General Dearborn should 
be removed: the order went at once. Probably our remon- 
strance to the executive might not have been quite so readily 
complied with, but that General Wilkinson had been ordered to 
the north in March, some months before I waited on the presi- 
dent for General Dearborn's removal. The good military repu- 
tation he had acquired by distinguished service, bravery and ac- 
tivity, in the war of the Revolution, was earned when he was in 
robust health, much younger, and had no responsibility to as- 
sume, but simply orders to obey. Exfoliation of veteran com- 
manders was one of the processes which the young army of 
that war had to suffer before becoming fit for action. On the 
15th of July, 1813, by a general order Dearborn took leave 
of the army at Fort George, pursuant to orders from the secretary 
of war, to retire from command till his health should be re- 
established. Brigadier-general Boyd, and the colonels and ma- 
jors, there addressed him in a warm remonstrance against his 
departure, which he answered by referring them to the com- 
mand of their superiors. The northern army, relieved of a vete- 
ran leader, whose age and health disqualified him for active and 
enterprising services in his successor, General Wilkinson, did not 
get a younger, healthier, or more competent commander. 

After Dearborn left Fort George, things were in a bad condition 
there, and at Sackett's Harbour, owing to inaction, the rawness 
of the troops, the want of officers, and various other causes. No 
attempt to act offensively was made after Boerstler's capture. — 
General Boyd's orders were to remain in Fort George, where our 
army was cooped up from May till October, thus losing the whole 
season of usual operations. Meantime the enemy was as active 
as we were the reverse. By the first of July, he advanced so far 
beyond the scene of Boerstler's surrender, as to fortify a line from 
Twelve Mile creek on the lake, across to Qneenstown, on the Nia- 
gara. There were occasional skirmishes, and little combats of 



CHAP. IX.] CAPTURE OF BLACK ROCK. 289 

border warfare, but no action of magnitude. The most enter- 
prising and effectual took place on the 11th of July, 1813, when the 
English Colonel Bishopp,an active officer, and I believe a mem- 
ber of Parliament, commanding at fort Erie, dashed over the Nia- 
gara, and surprised our post at Black Rock. There was a militia 
force there more than sufficient to repel this daring invasion ; but 
they ran away without resisting it. The block house, barracks, 
dock yard and stores, were destroyed, except such as the enemy 
wanted. But while employed in loading their booty in boats to 
carry back with them to Canada, a small force of regulars, militia 
and Indians were got together from Buffalo, attacked and killed 
Bishopp, with some of his men, and compelled the rest to fly 
with precipitation. Before General Wilkinson took command, 
our forces in Canada, about four thousand strong, were shut up 
in Fort George, by about half that number of enemies beleaguering 
it under General Vincent. Our commander there was General 
Boyd, a good soldier and brave, who would have gladly fought, 
if not peremptorily forbid. He had served among the Mahratta 
troops in India, was colonel of the fourth regiment of infantry 
which bore the brunt of the onslaught at Tippecanoe in 1811, 
when General Harrison was surprised there by Tecumseh, but 
beat him off. The Secretary of War did not consider General 
Boyd fit to be trusted with more than a brigade, or authority to 
act offensively as commander-in-chief. 

When Eustis's eastern friends, at the meeting of Congress in 
December, 1S12, reproached him with Hull's surrender and the 
wretched failure of the projected conquest of Canada, his ready 
and good-humoured answer was, " Gentlemen, it is all the fault 
of New England, (Dr. Eustis was from Boston ;) if you in New 
England had been well-inclined, we could easily have taken 
Canada by contract." General Armstrong was bent on taking it 
by force, and, though Madison did not much like him, Monroe 
still less, appeared to be able, energetic and patriotic in his 
labours as secretary of war. which was next to the treasury 
department, the most difficult undertaking of the crisis. On 
the 8th February, 1813, Armstrong, as secretary, submitted 
to President Madison, who approved it the 10th of that month, 
a plan for the first enterprize of a second campaign, in which 
he said nothing should be left to chance. Computing the 
vol. i. — 25 



290 ARMSTRONG'S PLAN. [FEB., 1813. 

British troops at Montreal and its dependencies at 12,000 men, 
one-sixth militia, (probably much more than they amounted to,) 
he thought we should be able to open the campaign on Lake 
Champlain, by the 15lh May, with sufficient force to dislodge 
them. The alternatives were, entire inaction or some pro- 
ceeding secondary to the main design of conquering Canada: 
that is, capturing Kingston, York, Erie and George, preparatory 
to that of Montreal, and ultimately Quebec. General Armstrong's 
project reckoned 2100 regular British troops in Upper Canada; 
distributed at Prescott 300, Kingston 600, George and Erie 1200. 
Our force should, in his opinion, be not less than 6000, act upon 
Lake Ontario by the 1st April, when it is free from ice, and on 
the St. Lawrence before the 15th May, till when it is not naviga- 
ble, and the enemy could not be reinforced, as was to be expected 
after that time. Part of Armstrong's plan of campaign was that, 
instead of Dearborn, Wilkinson should command the proposed 
conquest of Canada. 

Wilkinson was born in Maryland, bred a physician, a gentleman 
of good education, manners and address, pompous, pleasing, me- 
thodical, debonnair, fond of writing, served with distinction in the 
army of the Revolution, particularly under Gates in the memora- 
ble conflict with Burgoyne, which ended by his capitulation at 
Saratoga, the first overwhelming blow England received in that 
struggle, which procured for America the aid of France. Wilkin- 
son was sent by Gates with his official account of that great vic- 
tory to Congress, at Philadelphia. He was too old a soldier not 
to be fully aware of the burden assumed by placing himself at the 
head of so momentous an operation as the invasion of Canada, 
with raw levies; which, when he fell ill with fever, weighed 
him down with morbid anxiety. His first general order is- 
sued at Sackett's Harbour the 23d August, 1813, deprecated 
the dread responsibility of the trust for which, when disabled 
by disease at the crisis of its utmost need, he was, as General 
Boyd on Wilkinson's court martial testified, totally disqualified 
in body and mind. In a letter of the 13th August, 1S13, to 
General Armstrong, from Sackett's Harbour, Wilkinson com- 
plained, that with 3000 troops there he had but one colonel and 
twenty-five captains, a sad condition, said he, in which to lead 
raw troops to battle. 

In April, 1S13, the United States were divided into nine mili- 






CHAP. IX.] MILITARY DISTRICTS. £91 

tary districts, commanded, the first, by Brigadier-General Tho- 
mas H. Cashing; the second by brevet Brigadier-General Henry 
Burbeck; the third by Brigadier-General George Izard; the fourth 
by Brigadier-General Joseph Bloomfield; the fifth by Major- 
General Wade Hampton, with Brigadier-General Thomas Par- 
ker; the sixth by Major-General Thomas Pinckney ; the seventh 
by Brigadier-General Thomas Flournoy ; the eighth by Major- 
General William H. Harrison, with Brigadier-Generals Lewis 
Cass and Duncan M'Arthur; the ninth by Major-General Hen- 
ry Dearborn, with Major-Generals James Wilkinson, Morgan 
Lewis, Brigadier-Generals John P. Boyd, John Chandler, Zebu- 
Ion M. Pike, and William H. Winder, and Adjutant-General 
Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott. District No. 1 compre- 
hended Massachusetts and New Hampshire ; No. 2, Rhode 
Island and Connecticut; No. 3, New York from the sea to the 
Highlands and part of New Jersey ; No. 4, the rest of New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware ; No. 5, Virginia south of 
the Rappahannock ; No. 6, the two Carolinas and Georgia ; 
No. 7, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee ; No. 8, Kentucky, 
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri; No. 9, New 
York north of the Highlands and Vermont. In Jnly a tenth 
district was created, consisting of Maryland, the District of Co- 
lumbia and Virginia, between the Potomac and Rappahannock. 
Pike had been killed, Chandler and Winder captured, Dearborn 
withdrawn from Fort George before Wilkinson's transfer north. 
On the 23d of July, the Secretary of War renewed, and the 
president again approved, the secretary's original plan of cam- 
paign, to deflection from which, by Chauncey and Dearborn, 
may be imputed much of the subsequent failure of the whole. 
Armstrong's plan was always to strike first, and with all our might 
at Kingston, there to destroy the hostile ships, which would have 
ensured the success of the lake campaign. For this purpose he sug- 
gested collecting our whole force at Sackett's Harbour, and thence 
making the attack, which, if vigorously done, would in all proba- 
bility have succeeded, so much greater was our force. Even 
after the mistaken captures of York and Fort George, this was 
feasible and the best plan. Another of Armstrong's projects, as an 
alternative, was, to take and fortify Madrid on the St. Lawrence, 
whence, with Lake St. Francis, occupied by a few gun boats 
and barges, Wilkinson's army could easily march on Montreal, 



292 PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. [JULY, 1813. 

in concert with Hampton. Neither of these designs, however, 
could be carried into effect before Wilkinson's arrival from the 
south, which was not till August. On the 8th of that month, 
the secretary urged the general to attempt Kingston, as well on 
grounds of policy, as military principle, that being the great de- 
pot of the enemy's resources, the first and chief object of the 
campaign. Any plan, said Armstrong, carrying our operations 
wide of Kingston, but wounds the lion's tail, without hastening 
the termination of the war. 

The raw troops, ill supplied with officers, of which General 
Wilkinson complained, were not to prove the chief cause of his 
total failure in leading the important expedition confided to him 
as the fittest leader. Implacable enmity between him and Gene- 
ral Hampton, who commanded the right wing of that expedition, 
and did not choose to serve under his senior officer Wilkinson, 
proved another fatal hinderance, which the Secretary of War in 
vain attempted to remove. Misdirected, as perhaps the whole 
was, when Canada was attempted at all, instead of carrying the 
war into Nova Scotia ; then begun wrong at York and Fort 
George, instead of Kingston ; procrastinated from spring till au- 
tumn, by these and other delays ; the whole deplorably failed at 
last, through discord superadded to illness and incapacity of the 
commanders. Discord, the worst of evils, which mars so many 
operations, as faction sacrifices a country to malice and envy, 
and makes men destroy themselves to gratify their hatred of 
other men. Not only did the commanders Wilkinson and Hamp- 
ton hate each other, but their recriminations infected their fol- 
lowers ; the army was split into factions ; officers fought duels 
in these feuds ; and it is difficult from conflicting accounts of the 
operations of that deplorable campaign to discover or tell the 
truth. One thing is plain, that a genius to control and combine 
the whole was wanting. General Armstrong did not accomplish 
it. There was no controlling genius to subdue controversies and 
difficulties, and command fortune. Dearborn, if left, would have 
hardly done better than he had done before. Under him and Wil- 
kinson and Hampton, all veteran officers, all disabled by illness, 
and otherwise disqualified, from first to last everything went 
wrong : and it is painful to state what occurred, lest injustice 
is done to officers, none of whom can be mentioned without cen- 
sure, while some may be less deserving of it than others in their 



CHAP. IX.] GENERAL HAMPTON. £93 

tardy, contentious, apparently puerile, and certainly deplorable 
misconduct. 

General Wade Hampton had served in the army of the Revo- 
lution, and was a gentleman of large possessions in South Carolina 
and Louisiana, where he owned thousands of slaves. At his time 
of life, and with his affluence, he could not have been encamped 
in a northern wilderness but for fame. On the 16th of August, 
1813, Wilkinson from Albany sent his first orders to Hampton; 
who forthwith on the 23d, addressed a strong protest to the Secre- 
tary of War, insisting that Hampton's was a distinct and sepa- 
rate command, not to be taken from him before the end of the 
campaign, or encroached upon by a superior in rank; especially 
not to depend on the orders of an individual 200 or 400 miles off. 
He therefore tendered his resignation, and asked for a discharge. 
On the 25th of August, 1813, Armstrong wrote to Hampton, en- 
deavouring to reconcile him to a distinction between separate and 
independent commands. On the 31st of August, Hampton wrote 
to the secretary that his preparations would be complete for a 
movement with 3000 effective men in good spirits, on the 20th of 
September ; 4000 effectives, allowing one-fourth for sick. Official 
accounts at Washington, the 2d of August, 1813, the day Congress 
adjourned, from the inspector-general's return of troops, gave 
a total of 14,356 regular soldiers in the ninth military district, 
viz : at Sackett's Harbour 3,668, at Fort George 6,636, and at 
Burlington, 4,053. After Harrison's success, he left the west, 
with about 2000 more, accompanied by Captain Perry, (going 
home to Rhode Island,) and Captain Barclay, recovering of his 
wound.— They landed at Black Rock, the 24th of October, ex- 
pecting to join Wilkinson's expedition : which, after deducting 
sick and the usual allowances, could not be less than 12,000 
strong, including Hampton's division : a larger army than the 
United States had together during that war. 

At a council of war held at Sackett's Harbour, the 26th of 
August, 1813, the whole present effective force of the army was 
estimated at 7400 combatants, exclusive of the naval depart- 
ment. Generals Wilkinson, Lewis, Brown and Swartwout, (the 
quarter-master-general,) with Commodore Chauncey at that coun- 
cil, reckoned that by recruits and convalescents, the force might 
amount to 9000 men by the 20th of September, exclusive of 
militia, on whom no solid reliance could be placed. The army 

25* 



294 AMERICAN ARMY. [AUG., 1813. 

was then at Fort George and Niagara 3500, at Oswego, 200, at 
Sackett's Harbour, 2000, at Burlington, 4000. The season is 
wasting rapidly, adds the minute of that council; the honour and 
interest of the nation imperiously demand that a deadly blow 
shall be struck somewhere. It was therefore resolved to rendez- 
vous all the troops in the vicinity of Sackett's Harbour, in co- 
operation with our squadron, make a bold feint on Kingston, slip 
down the St. Lawrence, and in concert with General Hampton's 
division, take Montreal. General Wilkinson took command at 
Fort George early in September, 1813. A council of war held by 
him there the 20th of that month, with Brigadier-General Boyd, 
eleven colonels and lieutenant-colonels, and ten majors, resolved 
to rase and abandon that place, and transfer the troops to the 
vicinity of Kingston, for junction with the division at Sackett's 
Harbour, commanded by Major General Lewis. The aggregate 
of that division on the 24th of August, 1813, was 3483, 2400 fit 
for duty, unfit 549, convalescent 427. There was, however, but 
one colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, and a deficiency of officers of 
every grade. The sick among raw recruits in that region were 
always numerous : on the 18th of September, the hospital report 
was 6S1 for that week. Generals Armstrong, Dearborn, Wil- 
kinson, Hampton, Lewis, Izard, Commodore Chauncey, with 
many other officers, suffered from illness. The weather during 
the autumn was extremely inclement, superadding many diffi- 
culties to an enterprise hazardous at best, too hard of accomplish- 
ment, probably, to justify its imputation altogether to the incom- 
petency of leaders. Yet, when every department of government 
had done its part, and the belief of that day is confirmed by sub- 
sequent assurance that the English force in Canada was so much 
less than ours, as, with the lukewarmness of the French popula- 
tion, to render it nearly certain that bold and vigorous invasion 
must have succeeded, posterity will condemn the commanders 
under whom the attempt, miscarried. Uncertainty is the lot of all 
human affairs, and admonishes forbearance of censure. But if 
success be ever the standard, it is for war. Military men are 
tried for want of success as a crime, not only by public judgment, 
but according to their code of law. Wilkinson was honourably 
acquitted indeed: but he demanded trial. Hampton resigned 
soon after the campaign. Stern condemnation of the unfortu- 
nate in war, is like the rest of its philosophy, however severe, 






CHAP. IX.] SECRETARY OF WAR. 295 

not unjust in dealing with commanders, by whom the campaign 
of 1S13, in the north, was brought to a close scarcely less ignoble 
than that of Hull's in the west the year before. 

The failure of that expedition, and many other misfortunes 
ending with the terrible catastrophe of the capture of Washington, 
clouded General Armstrong's career, as Secretary of War, of 
whom it was said, among other aspersions, that his transfer of the 
war department to the St. Lawrence in autumn of 1813, was 
from improper motives of personal ambition; but had he not 
reason to flatter himself that his presence at the theatre of action 
would be important in quelling discord, animating exertion, and 
urging dispatch ? Neither Madison nor Monroe approved the 
movement, which, tried by the military standard of success, may 
be condemned. 

On the 5th of September, 1813, he arrived at Sackett's Har- 
bour, whence he wrote in familiar terms to General Wilkinson, 
that General Hampton would go through the campaign cordially 
and vigorously, but resign at the end of it ; be ready to move 
by the 20th with an effective force of 4000 men, and militia de- 
tachment of 1500. On the supposition that Prevost had taken 
post and chosen his champ tie bataille, I had, adds Armstrong, 
ordered Hampton to the Isle Aux Noix. Wilkinson's jealousy 
of Armstrong's authority was as sensitive as Hampton's of 
Wilkinson's. On the 24th of August, Wilkinson wrote to Arm- 
strong, I trust you will not interfere with my arrangements, or 
give orders within the district of my command, but to myself, 
because it would impair my authority and distract the public 
service. Two heads on the same shoulders make a monster. 
Unhappily for the country that deplorable campaign was a 
monster with three heads, biting and barking at each other, with 
a madness which destroyed them all, and disgraced the country. 
Discord was a leprosy in the very marrow of the enterprise, 
worse than all its other calamities. Armstrong was on good 
terms with both Wilkinson and Hampton till it failed : but thence- 
forth the enmity became as bitter between him and both of them, 
as between the two themselves. 

After chasing Yeo into harbour, and leaving him there, 
Chauncey sailed to the west end of the lake, and informed Wil- 
kinson on the 1st of October that he was ready to escort the 
army down the St. Lawrence. Soon after Wilkinson embarked 



296 EXPEDITION TO MONTREAL. [OCT., 1813. 

from Fort George for that destination. Colonel Scott, with his 
regiment, was left there with General McClure, of the New York 
militia, to do whatever was necessary to prevent the enemy get- 
ting useful repossession of that inglorious prison of our forces. 
Instead of the 1st of April, which the Secretary of War indicated 
to the president in February for the outset of operations on the 
lake, they did not begin till six months later. Instead of the 15th 
of May designated for the capture of Montreal, we were destined 
to total discomfiture in November, without battle or deadly blow, 
except the equivocal affair at Williamsburg, on the 10th of that 
month. General Armstrong said, after this failure, that the hea- 
vens, rather than the strongholds and prowess of the enemy, 
had before Hampton's defection, defeated Wilkinson's enterprise; 
the storms of October were his conquerors. He did not take his 
departure from the Niagara till the most inclement autumnal 
weather prevailed; rain, snowstorms, cold, uncomfortable and 
dangerous navigation, worse than the high seas, uncommon 
severities of an inhospitable region, since well peopled and pro- 
vided. Winter would have been a more favourable season, with 
its turnpikes of snow, salubrity of air, and occlusion of supplies 
from England to Canada. 

Throughout the war, of course, the press was not silent, but 
reigned supreme as ever in this the country of its prepotency. 
The Aurora, edited by Colonel William Duane, was then one 
of our most accredited newspapers. Mr. Duane had published 
works on military tactics, and was commissioned by President 
Jefferson, a colonel in the army. In 1813, he was adjutant- 
general of the fourth military district, then commanded by 
General Bloomfield : and on confidential terms with the generals 
and other officers of the old army. Extensively read in military 
learning, a rapid and able editor, Colonel Duane probably had 
confidential information, enabling him to anticipate the news of 
the day, and speculate as to events on the frontiers. When 
Generals Dearborn, Bloomfield and Pike tried their invasion of 
Canada, in the latter end of 1812, the Aurora anticipated the 
success of an expedition, which the editor thought must succeed, 
though it totally failed. 

The National Intelligencer then, if not the organ, the mouth 
piece of government at Washington, whose pages secretaries, 
comptrollers and other functionaries contributed to, and the pre- 



CHAP. IX.] AMERICAN PRESS. 297 

sident himself, like Napoleon in the Moniteur, at least by sug- 
gestions, republished in October from the Aurora what was 
calculated to aggravate disappointment for Wilkinson's and 
Hampton's failures, by proclaiming their success with untoward 
confidence. The semi-official prediction was headed— our armies 
have entered Upper Canada, and it is ours. 

" Letters from Fort George (viz. Wilkinson) of the 3d October, 
Chateauguay (Hampton) of the 6th, and Sackett's Harbour 
(Armstrong) of the 4th, show that the general of the enemy 
has found his superior in the field, and been completely out- 
generaled. The war minister (Armstrong) and commander-in- 
chief (Wilkinson) concur in opinion that in order to fell the tree, 
we must not begin at the top branches, but strike at the stump : 
which discovery, it is added, had been imparted to the former Sec- 
retary of War (Eustis) without the least effect. By this time it is 
probable our troops have thrown themselves between Kingston 
and Montreal. The war by land has assumed a new character in 
consequence of the presence of able men who understand their pro- 
fession, in the war department and at the head of the army. The 
division under General Hampton moved from Chateauguay on the 
morning of the 4th October, destination unknown but to himself, 
the troops having left behind all baggage except one change and 
five days provisions, their position prior to the march not more 
than forty miles from Montreal. We may expect that General 
Prevost (British) intends to make war like Proctor at Maiden, 
and KutusofT at Moscow, to give up everything to conflagration 
which he cannot rule. The ensuing week settles the fall of 
Upper Canada forever. The fall of Quebec in the ensuing 
spring will give our youth experience to ward against evils of 
thirty years neglect of military knowledge. The siege of Quebec, 
though severe, will not be more so than the actions of our naval 
heroes. Canada once ours, we shall have no enemy but a few 
domestic traitors and foreign emissaries on our soil." 

To appreciate now the disappointment then, of what these 
confident assurances occasioned, and the conflict of public senti- 
ment between the advocates and opponents of the conquest 
of Canada, it is necessary to contrast such publications from 
the Aurora with others of an opposite character. Among the 
journals deprecating war, one of the most respectable was the 
American Daily Advertiser, of Philadelphia, edited by Mr. 



298 AMERICAN PRESS. [OCT., 1813. 

Zachariah Poulson, who, perhaps, lived, like many others, to 
acknowledge that it did not prove so great an evil as it was de- 
nounced for. Mr. Poulson's paper luxuriated in the delays, 
blunders, defeats, expenditures, disasters, mishaps, calamities, 
freighting every mail from Canada. It had a column, almost 
stereotyped, with the caption of more disasters. While the 
Aurora promised magnificent conquests, the Advertiser fed that 
greedy monster, public sentiment, with superabundance of abor- 
tive performance and distressing calamities. The capture of 
Montreal, which was many months in agitation, with contradic- 
tory accounts of its backward progress, afforded lasting replenish- 
ment to this morbid maw, of more and more disasters. Generals 
Armstrong, Wilkinson and Hampton were three heads prolific of 
frightful reports. 

Duane's ominous predictions were soon followed by tidings of 
our first reverse near Lake Champlain, which, in Mr. Christie's 
account of it, is that on the 20th September General Hampton 
entered Canada at Odeltovvn with upwards of 5000 men, where 
he was worsted by less than as many hundred provincial militia, 
with a handful of regulars under Lieutenant Colonel de Sala- 
berry. Had Hampton sent forward a body of riflemen through 
the woods, he might without much difficulty have obtained a 
footing in the open country near St. John's ; which, if he could 
have succeeded in occupying, must have led to the surrender of 
the Isle Aux Noix. He, however, seems not to have been 
aware of our weakness, says Christie, or to have placed little 
reliance in the discipline and perseverance of his troops. On the 
22d September he evacuated Odeltown, and moved toward the 
head of Chateauguay river, under the pretext of the impractica- 
bility of advancing through the Odeltown road, for want of 
water for his cavalry and cattle, owing to the extraordinary 
drought of the season. 

After this miscarriage, General Hampton returned to his 
former position on the American side of the lines, at Four 
\ Corners, and waited there till the 21st October. By odd enough 
concert of action between two commanders, two hundred miles 
apart, so jealous of each other that they coincided in nothing, 
but disagreed about everything, on the same day, the 21st of 
October, that the one launched his expedition at Grenadier Island 
near Sackett's Harbour on Lake Ontario, the other broke up his 



CHAP. IX.] HAMPTON REPULSED. 



299 



encampment on Lake Champlain,each to march upon Montreal; 
as the third leader of their disastrous expedition, the Secretary of 
War, insisted to see which could get there first, lest either should 
precede the other, and monopolize all the credit of success, with- 
out either Wilkinson or Hampton being apprized of these simul- 
taneous movements of the two wings of the same army, under 
the command of three separate generals, but the control of 
neither. This is Christie's account of General Hampton's second 
attempt, that closed his military career, which it is well to adopt, 
in order to show what the enemy said of our strange discomfitures. 
On the 22d October, he reached the junction of the Outarde and 
Chateauguay rivers. On the night of the 25th he dispatched Colo- 
nel Purdy with a light brigade and strong body of infantry to fall 
on De t'alaberry's rear, while the main body was to attack it in 
front. Purdy, misled and bewildered in the woods, did not gain the 
point of attack as directed. General Hampton advanced next 
morning with about 3,500 men under General Izard, expecting to 
hear of Purdy's success, and drove in a small piquet. De Salaberry 
hearing the musketry, advanced with his few men as Izard did, 
steadily in open column, till within musket shot. The retreat of 
a few skirmishers, mistaken by the Americans for a flight, raised 
a shout from them which was re-echoed by the Canadians. De 
Salaberry, as a ruse de guerre, ordered the bugles placed at 
intervals to sound an advance, which had the desired effect of 
checking the ardour of the Americans. The noise brought up 
Colonel Purdy's division on the opposite side of the river. The 
Canadians drove back the American advance guard upon the 
main body until a company of the provincial militia hitherto con- 
cealed, at the word of command, opened so unexpected and 
effectual a fire as threw the Americans into the utmost disorder, 
and occasioned their tumultuous and precipitate retreat. General 
Hampton, finding his arrangement disconcerted by the total route 
of Colonel Purdy's division, withdrew his forces in good order 
without a single effort to carry the English entrenchments at the 
point of the bayonet, leaving Colonel de Salaberry, with scarcely 
300 Canadians, masters of the field. Toward the close of the 
engagement, Sir George Prevost, with Major-General de W T atta- 
ville, arrived on the ground. 

With due allowances for common national hyperbole, what 
Mr. Christie adds of encomium on the prowess of Colonel de Sala- 



300 HAMPTON AGAIN REPULSED. [OCT., 1813. 

berry and his Canadian countrymen, is probably well founded. 
It is too true that a few hundred of them worsted an army of be- 
tween 4000 and 5000 American regulars, whom General Hamp- 
ton had been for some time assiduously preparing for active ser- 
vice, and appeared anxious to lead to the capture of Montreal. 
For his intrepidity and coolness in this unfortunate affair, Briga- 
dier-General George Izard was promoted to be a major-general ; 
a man of extensive attainments, elegant education, having been at 
the military college of Liege, in Flanders, entering the army very 
young at the lowest grade, and elevated by his merits to the high- 
est. Such officers, and there were many such, could not withstand 
the adverse tide, which seemed to set against our military pro- 
gress, throughout most of the year 1813, when the defeats and 
dishonour of the regular army under veteran commanders ex- 
ceeded those of the volunteers and militia, to whom it was indis- 
pensable to confide the first operations of hostilities the year be- 
fore. Daring and discipline constantly sustained the navy through 
an unbroken career of victories, while the regular army, without 
discipline or daring, sometimes, as in these affairs of General 
Hampton without courage, was undergoing a continual series of 
mortifying defeats. Even the Aurora could not deny, or the 
National Intelligencer, that one of our generals who was to out- 
general his opponent, had wofully failed to perform his promise. 
The American Daily Advertiser might head its columns in capitals 
with more disasters ; the advocates of war were compelled to 
endure throughout a tedious and anxious month of disappointed 
expectations, daily renewed editions of more and more disasters 
by every northern mail, till the bubble of Canadian conquest 
burst and evaporated, if not forever, at any rate for that war. 

After lingering between Sackett's Harbour and Fort George 
from the middle of August till the latter end of October, with 
no doubt many difficulties, privations and mortifications to make 
head against ; what commander of an army has not? infinitely 
less, however, than Greene in Carolina, or Jackson in Louisiana; 
General Wilkinson, at last, on the unlucky 21st of the latter 
month, embarked his army at Grenadier Island, near Sackett's 
Harbour. By a general order of the 9th, issued by Adjutant- 
General Walbach, it was formed into four brigades and a re- 
serve; the first brigade composed of the fifth, twelfth and thir- 
teenth regiments under Brigadier-General Boyd ; the second, of 



CHAP. IX.] WILKINSON'S EMBARKATION. 3Q1 

the twenty-second and fifteenth regiments under Brigadier-Gene-- 
ral Brown; the third, of the ninth, twenty-fifth and sixteenth 
regiments under Brigadier-General Covington ; the fourth, of the 
eleventh, twenty-first, and fourteenth regiments under Brigadier- 
General Swartwout; the reserve under Colonel Macomb, con- 
sisting of his regiment and the detachments ordered to join him ; 
Major Harkimer, with his volunteers, among them ; and the artil- 
lery under Brigadier-General Moses Porter; the dragoons and 
rifles to be disposed of according to circumstances and special 
orders. The Secretary of War was at that time moving about the 
neighbourhood of Lake Ontario, at Sackett's Harbour, Denmark, 
Antwerp, Watertown, and elsewhere, as occasion required, endea- 
vouring to urge the dispatch and success of the expedition by con- 
stant efforts to preserve harmony among its leaders. General Har- 
rison also arrived about the same time with M'Arthur's brigade 
from the west, and sanguine inhabitants of distant places were 
flattered with the hope that he would perhaps add the capture 
of General Vincent, at Burlington heights, to that of Proctor's 
army on the Thames, as he was preparing to do when ordered 
to Sackett's Harbour to supply the vacuum there. The National 
Intelligencer, the National Advocate, of New York, the Balti- 
more Patriot, even some of the New England newspapers, 
abounded with arguments and reasons for the conquest of Cana- 
da, why and how. We were told early in November, upon 
semi-official authority, that Wilkinson's army was concentrated 
with Hampton's, at Montreal, the 15th October, and would take 
Quebec probably in May, certainly before the 4th July. The 
inhabitants of Montreal were said to be moving their valuables 
to Quebec. Hampton was only waiting for fair weather to sit 
down before Montreal and there wait for Wilkinson. Lateness 
of season, severity of weather were no reason to fear disappoint- 
ment, for Montgomery fell at Quebec the 12th November, 1775. 
" The plan of the campaign," said that cautious court-journal, 
the National Intelligencer, on the 20th November, more than a 
week after its utter failure, but when we were still deluded with 
assurance of its success, "now that it is fully developed, is the 
subject of universal praise in the army, deep, exact and com- 
prehensive." (The plan was certainly not so bad as the execu- 
tion.) Wilkinson's letter to the Secretary of War of the 15th 
November, assured him, as a fact, that, on the 4th of that month, 
vol. i. — 26 



302 WILKINSON'S FLOTILLA. [OCT., 1813. 

the force at Montreal was but 400 marines and 200 sailors sent 
up from Quebec. But more disasters were at hand ; until dis- 
affection was delighted by intelligence of the defeat of what 
seemed to be the last effort of the war. 

The secretary left the lake country for Albany and Washing- 
ton : General Harrison soon followed the same way home to the 
west. On the 26th October, the president returned to Washing- 
ton from his Virginia residence, restored to health, awaiting ad- 
vices of Canadian victories for his forthcoming annual message 
to Congress, in December, just before the session opened heralded 
by accounts of the total and inglorious failure of another year's 
Canadian conquest. 

Embarking at Grenadier island in more than 300 boats, pro- 
tected by some of Chauncey's squadron, Wilkinson committed 
his fortune to the waves from the 21st October to the 5th No- 
vember, which fortnight it consumed to get out of the lake and 
into the river. During three long weeks, as long as it requires 
by sail, near twice as long as by steam, to go from America to 
Europe, the flotilla, with General Wilkinson, ill and morbid, 
crawled, not vigorously or confidently, but despondingly, as 
the order in council of war at Sackett's Harbour proposed, to 
slip down to Montreal. The Odyssey of a calamitous voyage 
was written every day in the general's boat ; mostly bedridden, 
getting continually worse, he was nearly invisible to his tem- 
pest-tossed followers. There were not boats enough even at 
first ; and one-third of what there were, were stranded, sunk, 
wrecked, or otherwise cast away in the transit ; the clothing unfit 
for an inclement and boisterous, wet and tempestuous autumn ; 
the navigation extremely difficult and hazardous ; large numbers 
of officers and men, like their general, prostrate by illness ; conti- 
nually assailed by vigilant and skilful enemies on the water and 
the shores from batteries at every turn ; with shoals, rapids, fogs, 
storms; provisions unwholesome ; clothing soaked with water; 
ammunition damaged ; unfaithful or ignorant pilots — an endless 
catalogue of misfortunes. As early as the 24th October, the 
general's diary recorded irreparable injuries, deplored blasted 
hopes, and prayed for relief from jeopardy. When the explo- 
sion afterwards took place between him and Hampton, Wilkin- 
son acknowledged that had Hampton joined him as ordered, 
Wilkinson intended to relinquish the command to his rival, so 



CHAP. IX.] DESCENT TO MONTREAL. 393 

conscious was he of his own inability for it. Sometimes, though 
seldom, he landed and slept on shore, but always disturbed by 
the fire of arms which, in the vigour of health and age, would 
have been music to animate him. On the 6th November, when 
the English batteries at Prescott were to be passed, he debarked 
the whole army, except such as were left with General Brown 
to pilot the flotilla through that peril. The enemy's brigs, 
schooners, gunboats, and galleys, led by the gallant Captain 
Mulcaster, gave our frailer craft no repose or respite from attack. 
Brown commanding the advance, familiar with the country, 
adroit to elude, and bold to face dangers, — passed the boats 
through in the night, without injury, but not without infinite 
uneasiness to the commander-in-chief, whose febrile prostration 
unfitted him for such occasions. His diary noted of that terrible 
but harmless night, that of 300 cannon shot fired at 300 boats, not 
one struck, and only one man was killed. Meantime Hampton, on 
the 1st November, wrote from Chateauguay to Armstrong to re- 
call his attention to Hampton's letters of the 22d and 31st August 
(which tendered his resignation) and to add that events had had 
no tendency to change his opinion of the destiny intended for 
him, nor his determination to retire from a service where he 
could neither feel security nor expect honour. The campaign 
I consider substantially at an end, said this letter. Acceptance 
of my resignation so soon as the troops are put into winter 
quarters, is what I trust you will not refuse to send me by return 
of Colonel King. Colonel King was General Hampton's adju- 
tant-general. Not finding General Armstrong at Sackett's Har- 
bour, as he expected, Colonel King visited General Wilkinson 
on the 6th November, whom he found seven miles below Og- 
densburg. From that place Wilkinson wrote by King to Hamp- 
ton that Wilkinson was destined to, and determined on Montreal, 
for which the division under General Hampton's command must 
co-operate. The point of rendezvous was left to him; but St. 
Regis indicated as the place of meeting, in the opinion of Wilkin- 
son's officers, if Hampton was not in force to face the enemy. 
Of provisions, Wilkinson had bread for fifteen days and meat for 
twenty ; a battering train and plenty of fixed ammunition ; but 
was deficient in loose powder and cartridges of which Hampton 
must bring his own. The Secretary of War had informed Wilkin- 
son that ample magazines of provisions were laid up at Chateau- 



304 DESCENT TO MONTREAL. [NOV., 1813. 

guay. On the 8th November Hampton answered this letter, 
deeply impressed with the responsibility of deciding upon the 
means of co-operation. St. Regis was most pleasing until the 
amount of your provisions was disclosed. In throwing myself 
upon your scanty means, I should be weakening you where most 
vulnerable. Consulting my principal officers, I did not hesitate 
upon the opinion that by throwing myself back on my main 
depot, and falling upon the enemy's flank, straining every nerve 
to open a communication from Plattsburg to Conawhaga, or any 
other point you may indicate on the St. Lawrence, I should 
more effectually contribute to your success than by the junction 
at St. Regis. I hope to be able to prevent your starving. Be- 
sides rawness and sickness, my troops have endured fatigues 
equal to a winter campaign in the late snows and bad weather, 
and are sadly dispirited and fallen off. What can be accom- 
plished by human exertion with these means, I will, with a mind 
devoted to the general objects of the campaign. 

On the 7th, 8th and 9th November, Wilkinson moved down 
the St. Lawrence, as if still expecting to meet Hampton, and 
march on Montreal ; never without constant interruptions from 
the indefatigable enemy, whom he never turned upon and crushed 
as he might and should have done. Macomb, Eustis, Forsyth, 
McPherson were sent ashore to beat him off, and effected it. — 
Drawing near the current of Rapids called the Sault, the leap of 
waters, a cataract of eight miles descent, the general's order of 
the day declared his uneasiness at proceeding where it said there 
was no retreat, no landing, no turning to the right or left, and 
added that the movement of yesterday was a reproach to the 
service. 

From this time it is painful to pursue the adventures of this 
ill-starred voyage, where both commanders were incapacitated by 
temper or disease. There was no hope of succesSj but the enter- 
prise was doomed to unavoidable defeat. 

The battle of Chrystler's fields, near Williamsburg, which took 
place on the 10th of November, 1813, was the last act of the 
drama. Accounts of it, as of most battles, vary largely, according 
to the wishes of the respective reporters. We had them from Co- 
lonel Morrison, the English commander's dispatch, from General 
Boyd's, the American commander, from General Wilkinson's 
diary, and Mr. Christie added his afterwards. 



CHAP. IX.] BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG. 3Q5 

According to Christie, Lieutenant Colonel Morrison, with gun 
boats, on the 29th November, took possession of a considerable 
quantityof provisions and stores belonging to the American army, 
with two pieces of ordnance. Next day he pressed so close upon 
it, as to compel Boyd's brigade to concentrate their forces and give 
battle. The battle of Williamsburg, or Chrystler's field, which he 
describes at large, and from Colonel Morrison's official dispatch, 
claims the victory — he pronounces, the handsomest affair during 
the war, from the professional science displayed by the adverse 
commanders during the course of the action ; and when the pro- 
digious preparations of the American government for that expedi- 
tion are considered, with the failure of which their hopes of con- 
quest vanished, the battle of Chrystler's field may be classed as an 
event of the first importance in the defence of these provinces. 
General Armstrong animadverted severely on Wilkinson's omis- 
sion to take, turn, scatter or crush that attempt of an enemy's force 
in his rear, to retard, impede or annoy his march, as palpable vio- 
lation of an obvious maxim in the practice of all great captains. 
General Wilkinson, who knew no more of the affair than was an- 
nounced to his pillow by the distant cannonade, put it down in his 
diary as a drawn battle in which our raw troops behaved with 
great spirit. General Boyd, who commanded them, in his official 
report, claimed a decided victory, having driven the English from 
the ground, of which he remained in possession, after two hours 
close conflict, the enemy not venturing to renew the engagement 
next day, but suffering our army to pursue its way unmolested. 
Christie says that Morrison had but 800 men with him. English 
prisoners reported 2,170. Wilkinson made them 2500. Boyd had 
1600; led by himself, General Covington, who was mortally 
wounded, General Swartwout, (Covington and Swartwout volun- 
teering for the action,) Colonel Pearce, Colonel Isaac Cole?. 
Colonel Preston, severely wounded, 236 of our people were 
wounded, and 100 killed, at Williamsburg; the English loss 
by their account much less, by our account much more. To- 
wards evening they withdrew to their camp, the Americans 
to their boats. That battle was one of those dear-bought 
lessons in the hard noviciate of our army, which, if well com- 
manded, might have inspired the confidence, and insured a vic- 
tory to carry it to Montreal. Instead of that, as Chrystie justly 

26* 



306 BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG. [NOV., 1813. 

boasts, it disconcerted, discouraged, and frustrated the most ex- 
tensive undertaking of the war of 1812. Without odious com- 
parison, posterity may ask how a twelvemonth afterwards Jack- 
son, as ill as Wilkinson, without a sixth of his regular force, and 
much greater hinderances, conquered a vastly more formidable 
foe. From his triple posts at Mobile, Baton Rouge and New Or- 
leans, he watched with eagle eye the lion's approach, penetrated 
his design and crushed his movement. The battle of Williams- 
burg was to Wilkinson what Jackson's admirable onset of the 23d 
of December was to Pakenham. The English in Canada, like the 
Americans in Louisiana, struck the first blow, contended for 
every inch, confronted every advance, harassed, disconcerted, de- 
moralized and thus defeated their assailants. Clamorous exultation 
awards to the victory of the 8th of January the applause more 
due to the drawn battle of the 23d of December, which was the 
first step to that consummation. So, at Williamsburg, unless 
Wilkinson was in bodily health and mental vigour personally 
to command complete repulsion of the English attack, defeat his 
enemy there, and follow him everywhere till he had crushed 
him, further proceeding was in vain. His invasion of Canada 
was defeated. The British and Canadian troops deserve great 
credit for the persevering and invincible spirit in which they met 
that formidable invasion, fortified every pass on the St. Lawrence, 
siezed every opportunity of harassing, impeding, and assailing 
our army, until at last they, more than storms and casualties, more 
than Hampton's defection, forced it to dishonoured defeat ; when 
every officer engaged in the battle of Williamsburg gave assurance 
of conduct, which, well led, was the pledge of victory. The battle 
of Williamsburg was the first of those Canadian tournaments be- 
tween the regular armies of the United States and Great Britain, 
which, next year, without adequate combination or plans on our 
part, a talent yet wanting to the brave commanders of the northern 
army, nevertheless, co-operated with the naval victories, to pro- 
duce the peace of Ghent. Colonel Pearce, who took command of 
the third brigade when Covington fell, Swartwout, Gaines, Rip- 
ley, Morgan, Grafton, Wallack, Beebee, Chambers, Johnson, 
Cummings, Worth, Whiting, were mentioned with distinction. 
General Boyd's indefinite order from General Wilkinson, was to 
beat back the enemy. If Wilkinson had been in health and spirits 
to head his troops, and not only beat back but follow up the 



CHAP. IX.] FAILURE OF THE EXPEDITION. 307 

enemy till demolished, he might probably have gone to Montreal, 
even without Hampton's reinforcement. 

The continual discomforts, annoyances and alarms of an enter- 
prise for which General Wilkinson was incapacitated by disease, 
completely demoralized the commander-in-chief. Rejoicing not 
that he had vanquished but escaped from the enemy, from the 
rapids, the storms and the various sinister casualties of the pro- 
tracted voyage. Wilkinson, at last, with more than three-fourths 
of his way won to Montreal, was without any considerable force 
to prevent his getting there, even without junction with Hampton, 
whose corps would at any rate have served as a reserve to that 
of Wilkinson, who believed that there were but few English 
troops between him and the goal of his race. On the 12th 
of November, Colonel Scott serving under General Brown 
in the advance, fifteen miles ahead of Wilkinson, routed the 
English under Colonel Dennis, each party about 800 strong, 
at Hoophole creek, and took many of them prisoners. The 
opinion of both those gallant officers and most others with the 
best opportunity of knowing, was, that Montreal was within 
their reach and power. The toils, risks, losses, mortifications of 
the campaign were all to be gloriously made amends for, when 
the expedition was blasted on the 12th of November, the anni- 
versary of Montgomery's fall at Quebec, nearly forty years 
before. 

On that unlucky day, Inspector-General Atkinson arrived at 
General Wilkinson's head quarters with a letter from General 
Hampton, refusing to join the expedition or proceed further into 
Canada. On these, there is too much reason to apprehend, from 
Wilkinson's morbid prostration, to him not unwelcome tidings, 
which relieved him from all further suspense, he forthwith re- 
sorted to that panacea for such predicaments, a council of war, 
by which it was unanimously resolved, that the conduct of Major- 
General Hampton, in refusing to join his division to the troops 
descending the St. Lawrence, to carry an attack against Mon- 
treal, rendered it expedient to remove General Wilkinson's 
army to French Mills' on Salmon river. Brown and Scott 
were recalled, and that resolve was at once put in effect the next 
day. Arrived there and established in winter quarters, Wil- 
kinson wrote to Armstrong for permission to proceed to take 
the Isle aux Noix, and for leave of absence from the army 



308 WILKINSON'S FAILURE. [NOV., 1813- 

to recruit his strength and spirits, after his inglorious campaign. 
Soon after, he ordered Hampton to be arrested and brought to 
court martial, whose resignation was again tendered and finally 
accepted in March following. Wilkinson was tried and acquitted. 
But history will recollect his failure and forget his acquittal ; al- 
though English accounts at that period represented their forces in 
Canada as imposing. Halifax Journals mentioned 15,000 regular 
soldiers there, and threatened a winter campaign against the 
United States. The King's Son, Captain Hanchett's ship, the Dia- 
dem, arrived with others, landing 1600 marines, and 400 seamen 
at Quebec. It may be, therefore, that General Wilkinson's esti- 
mate of the enemy's weakness was erroneous. But according to 
his own belief a bold and fortunate general would have afforded 
the many brave young men in that army, the opportunity they 
sighed for, of at least striking the deadly blow somewhere, which 
the council of war presided by Wilkinson at Sackett's Harbour, 
on his arrival there, resolved was due to the honour and interests 
of the country. In his memoirs, Wilkinson ridicules the ten 
thousand huts which the Secretary of War had ordered for 
his army's winter quarters in Canada. Yet as a striking proof 
of what may be done in winter, it may be mentioned that when 
Wilkinson's army left French Mills the 13th of February, 1814, 
the second regiment of artillery performed a march of sixty-nine 
miles, with their cannon on sleds, from nine o'clock one morn- 
ing to eleven o'clock the next. The Florida war, after many in- 
active campaigns, at length brought to a close in one conducted 
during summer, in a climate much more fatal in summer than 
winter in Canada; the exploit of General Worth, is another to 
be added to numerous demonstrations, and indeed the philosophy 
of military power, that movement, action, boldness, what Shak- 
speare calls industrious soldiership, is the great method of suc- 
cess in war. 

Overruling Providence ordered it otherwise, by means of our 
inefficient leaders in 1812 and 1813. The first year of volun- 
teers and militia, the second with regular soldiers, only raw re- 
cruits, indeed, but led by veteran commanders, were the noviciate 
which nations sometimes undergo in arms, however severe, yet 
salutary, if the martial spirit is not extinct. The Aurora and Na- 
tional Intelligencer comforted the public in December, with recol- 
lections that it cost Great Britain four unfortunate campaigns 



CHAP. IX.] PUBLIC PRESS. 309 

to wrest Canada from the French, and that tribulation was the 
wholesome trial of our republican arms. The president did not 
even allude in his annual message to Congress, at our second 
session the 7th of December, 1813, to the terrible blows just then 
inflicted on the war by the northern army. That task was pru- 
dently left to the public press. The National Intelligencer, Bal- 
timore Patriot, Democratic Press, National Advocate, Boston 
Patriot, New Hampshire Patriot, Niles' Register, and other well- 
disposed northern public journals, with difficulty apologized for 
our disgraceful mishaps, of which the last and worst that year, 
which took place on the Niagara, remains to be told, and which 
dark columns of more disasters in the many disaffected news- 
papers, overshadowed all attempts to varnish. The Boston Ga- 
zette, prominent in opposition, published in strains of thanks- 
giving : "Every hour is fraught with doleful tidings: humanity 
groans from the frontiers. Hampton's army is reduced to about 
2000; Wilkinson's cut up and famishing; crimination, and recri- 
mination the order of the day. Democracy has rolled herself up 
in weeds, and laid down for its last wallowing in the slough of 
disgrace. Armstrong, the cold-blooded director of all the military 
anarchy, is chopfallen. 

' Now lift, ye Saints, your heads on high, 
And shout, for your redemption's nigh.' " 

These deadly blows of disaster and ridicule struck Congress 
in session at the seat of government, shooting from all parts of 
the north and east. Generals Harrison, Hampton and Boyd, with 
General Armstrong, were there when complete ruin from Cham- 
plain to Erie marked the retrograde of our arms, and closed the 
year 1813 with a destructive invasion of New York. 

My sketch of these events is extremely imperfect : unavoid- 
ably so. Many gallant officers are yet living who served in 
Wilkinson's or Hampton's divisions in 1813, who owe their 
country fuller and better accounts than a distant observer can 
give of those memorable transactions. The romantic scenery of 
their adventures, the mad conflict of their commanders, the for- 
lorn fortunes of their enterprise, the wild uncultivated regions then 
where now great sea-ports and cities flourish, canals, railroads, 
noble establishments, the resort and delight of innumerable 
travelers from Europe as well as America, attracted by the 
Falls of Niagara, the beauties of the lake country, and the facili- 
ties of traveling— invite the pens of many educated and accom- 



310 FORT GEORGE. [DEC, 1813. 

plished survivors of the American army of 1813, regular and 
volunteer, to the patriotic and pleasing duty of rescuing from 
oblivion the circumstances but faintly presented in this sketch. 

Colonel Scott was left by General Wilkinson in charge of Fort 
George, our only foothold, after nearly two years effort, in that 
part of Canada. Eager to share the honours of the capture of 
Montreal, Scott, as permitted, left the fort under command of 
General McClure, of the New York militia, and hastened by 
flood and field to overtake his leader to glory. Soon after his 
departure the fatal catastrophe of our border warfare completed 
its abominable mischiefs. Prevost, always alert and able, ordered 
Lieutenant-General Drummond, a portly Englishman, to com- 
mand Upper Canada, in place of Major-General de Rottenberg, 
and Drummond resolved with his 1200 men to retake Fort 
George. Both sides of the Niagara had been from April till 
December distracted by the disgraceful hostilities of border war- 
fare, in which the Americans were the aggressors, and doomed 
to be the greatest sufferers. Western New York was, before the 
year ended, desolated by British reaction, transcending American 
aggression, which we cannot deny provoked, however severe, 
that retaliation. 

McClure proved no match for Drummond in spirit, if in force, 
or for Colonel Murray who brought on the English advance. 
After a vapouring proclamation to the Canadians, as if they were 
a conquered people, our general, on the defeat of one of his scout- 
ing parties, called a council of war, which resolved to abandon Fort 
George as untenable ; though Colonel Scott left it well garnished 
with artillery, and provided with ammunition, with open commu- 
nication to our side of the river, and complete for resistance. 
A council of war nevertheless resolved to dismantle and abandon 
it, and remove the garrison to Fort Niagara on the American side. 
There would have been no great harm in that, however disreputa- 
ble, without firing a gun. But it was furthermore resolved in this 
the most reprehensible of all our war councils, to destroy such Ca- 
nadian villages and places in front of Fort George as might afford 
the enemy shelter during the winter. Accordingly, says Christie, 
pursuant to directions of the American Secretary of War, (which 
was not the fact,) McClure precipitately evacuated Fort George 
on the 12th of December, after dismantling it, set fire to the 
flourishing village of Newark, containing about 150 houses, 



CHAP. IX.] QUE ENS TOWN BURNED. 3H 

reduced to ashes, leaving the wretched inhabitants, including 
more than 400 women and children, to the accumulated horrors 
of famine and a Canadian winter. That was not all : after 
McClnre retreated over the river, and took shelter in Fort 
Niagara, perceiving the enemy in considerable force on the oppo- 
site side, deprived of a shelter at Fort George, and therefore 
seeking it at Queenstown, McClure had red hot shot fired at 
that place to deprive them of shelter there also. The British, 
under Murray, 500 men, mostly militia and Indians, the Indians 
now to have an occasion in which their savage nature would be 
indulged to the uttermost, immediately occupied Fort George. 
The barbarous policy, says Christie, of the American govern- 
ment, exasperated the army as well as the inhabitants of the 
frontier, of whose impatience for retaliation General Drummond 
promptly availed himself, by adopting the resolution of carrying 
the American Fort Niagara by surprise. Signal, though atro- 
cious, vengeance was taken of American misconduct, perhaps 
the first, certainly the worst of the kind that occurred during the 
war, contrary to the manner in which it was uniformly waged 
on our part, which became the subject of long correspondence 
between the Secretary of State, Monroe, and the English de- 
fenders of it, and was pleaded in juslification for attacks on 
Washington, Baltimore and New Orleans, threats of them on 
New York, Philadelphia, and even Boston next year. Every- 
thing conspired to disgrace our arms in that affair. Aware pro- 
bably of the shameful negligence of the garrison at Fort Ni- 
agara, at any rate bursting with indignation, it was made known 
on both sides of the river that the enemy intended to surprise it. 
Strange as it may seem they almost gave notice of their design. 
Our general retired from the fort to Buffalo, without cautioning 
the regular officers in charge of it, that it was to be surprised 
and taken. Those officers were a captain of artillery, and two 
captains of infantry, all having companies of regular soldiers 
there ; but not one of the officers in the fort or near it when 
assaulted. Those unworthy sentinels of a deserted post were 
somewhere else on business or pleasure, instead of where they 
were bound to be. Publicly preparing for the enterprise, de- 
liberately waiting some days for batteaux brought by land from 
Burlington, as there were but two boats on the English shore of 
the Niagara, on the night of the 18th of December Colonel Mur- 



312 FORT NIAGARA SURPRISED. [DEC, 1813. 

ray crossed with 550 men, landed a few miles from the fort, 
quietly approached, cut off' the picquets, surprised the sentinels 
on the glacis and at the gate, and effected an entrance at the 
main gate. After a feeble resistance, the garrison, without a 
single commanding officer, surrendered at discretion ; which ren- 
ders what ensued worse than if the place had been carried by 
storm instead of surprise. The British lost one lieutenant and 
five men killed, Colonel Murray and three men wounded. Sixty- 
five of our men were put to death with the bayonet, many in 
bed, some in the hospital, two officers and twelve men wounded 
by enraged militia and Indians, whom Colonel Murray perhaps 
would hardly, or was not anxious to restrain, for it wasaninroad 
of revenge and extermination, of which these homicides were 
only the beginning. Murray took in the fort 300 soldiers of the 
regular army, an immense quantity of commissariat stores, 3000 
stand of arms, several pieces of ordnance, and a great number of 
rifles. Worse than all, he took and the enemy kept Fort Niagara 
and our soil thenceforward as long as the war lasted. This, 
however, was only the beginning of the abominations, brought on 
ourselves in that quarter, where in the so-called patriot outbreaks 
latterly, the burning of the steamboat Caroline and other gross 
irregularities, there seems to be a fatality in the intercourse be- 
tween the two countries, too near to be good neighbours. 

At Washington, just before tidings of these frontier disasters, 
on the 28th December, Decatur's official letter from New London 
was published, declaring, on the authority of the honest editor 
of a federal newspaper there, that blue-lights were distinctly seen 
burning on both points of the harbour, as signals to the British 
blockading squadron, whenever ours attempted to go to sea ; 
the creation of that party, as it was claimed, the glory of the 
country, the terror of England and the admiration of the world, 
the navy, to be sacrificed to the fell spirit of faction. The same 
day, together with the authentic report of that traitorous disaf- 
fection, came tidings that pursuant to orders from the Secretary of 
War, Fort George, being untenable, had been razed and aban- 
doned. And that gloomy day, too, the House of Representatives 
was adjourned by the clerk soon after it met, because of the 
Speaker, Mr. Clay's, absence, preventing, with Mr. Rums King 
and other friendly mediators, a duel apprehended from a chal- 
lenge by Mr. Grosvenor, accepted by Mr Calhoun, for words 



CHAP. IX.] CAPTURE OF FORT NIAGARA. 3J3 

some days before spoken between them in the House. That 
was the day, also, of Mr. Hanson's renewal of Mr. Webster's 
motion of the session before, accusing the administration of 
French influence. Next day it was published, semi-official ly, 
that our militia-general had been obliged to destroy Fort George 
because the time of his men was out and they refused to stay 
longer. Others called out had not come, nor volunteers, for 
whom efforts were ineffectually made. The Secretary of War 
had not authorized the burning of Queenstown, it was said, 
unless it became necessary in defending Fort George ; and the 
polic}? - of the whole proceeding was questioned. The day after, 
a paragraph headed " Disastrous and Shocking," stopped the 
press to tell part of the whole truth ; an express had arrived 
stating that the Sunday before 3000 British regulars stormed Fort 
Niagara, murdered the whole garrison, burned the villages of 
Lewistown and Manchester, together with every building be- 
tween there and Niagara, massacred several families named, 
and were on their way to Buffalo, laying waste everything they 
fell in with. All this and more, much more, turned out to be too 
true. General Lewis Cass, dispatched to the scene, officially 
reported, from Williamsville, that, having visited the ruins of 
Buffalo, he had never witnessed such distress and destruction ; 
though he had seen much the year before at Detroit, Maiden, 
and on the Thames, when Hull surrendered and Proctor fled 
from the flames he lit up. Our loss of character was greater 
than that of life and property. General Cass ascertained that the 
troops reported to have done the devastation, were but 650 
men, regulars, militia, and Indians ; the Indians, superhuman' 
for stratagems, spoils, and slaughter, but helpless for taking a 
fort, except by surprise, the militia not much more to be feared ; 
so that our nearly 400 regulars in the fort had been easily con- 
quered by an equal, perhaps less number ; to oppose whom we 
had between 2500 and 3000 militia, all, except very few of them, 
behaving, said General Cass, in the most cowardly manner. Ma- 
jor-General Riall followed Murray over the Niagara, with rein- 
forcements, ten days after, crossed again, on the 28th December,- 
attacked Black Rock and Buffalo, burned both those places, with 
three of our vessels, captured a good many cannons ; killed or 
wounded some hundred men and took 130 prisoners, among the 
vol. i. — 27 



314 AGGRAVATED WAR. [DEC, 1813. 

rest, Major Chapin, who had acquired notoriety by his activity 
as a partisan in that vicinity. 

While this little war was waging in Canada, the mightiest of 
all modern wars was drawing to a close by the winter's cam- 
paign of the Emperor of the French, defeated and driven out of 
Germany, deserted by his conquests and married alliances, both 
his own and his imperial consort's families, bravely and inflexi- 
bly, but in vain contending for the throne, he was compelled 
to abdicate in April, 1814, at Fontainbleau. Great Britain dic- 
tated her own conquering terms in the French capital: and was 
enabled to turn against the United States, without European 
diversion, her thousand ships of war, thousands of soldiers, and 
five hundred millions of dollars of annual revenue. An elabo- 
rate letter of the Secretary of State, Monroe, to the English 
naval commander-in-chief, Cochrane, explained our alleged mis- 
conduct in Canada — at all events amply atoned for by British 
retaliation, immediately desolating a hundred-fold the places 
and the property ; destroying life and inflicting misery in still 
greater proportion. But the decree of Great Britain's mighty 
vengeance had been pronounced— that the United States should 
be not only punished for audacious hostilities against their mo- 
ther country, declared at the dictation of the French usurper she 
had overthrown ; but that furthermore, parts of the American 
states should be subdued to their former allegiance ; the Indians 
restored to all the lands they had been driven from ; and the 
slaves not set free ; (for the fever of abolition had not then begun 
to burn in English bosoms) but captured and taken to the West 
India Islands, there to be sold as property to new masters. Em- 
boldened by the continual series of American discomfitures, 
without much interruption, from the beginning of the war, during 
the first eighteen mom lis of its progress; and intoxicated with 
her own successes at the same time everywhere in Spain, Ger- 
many, Italy, France, and America, England conceived plans of 
American punishment and conquest just when American organi- 
zation and discipline were becoming formidable ; the army soon 
purged of senilities, filled with young commanders thirsting for 
renown ; and that naval ascendency which was the pure result 
of superior discipline and seamanship so completely established, 
both morally and physically, that every American sailor fought 
the English, as the English theretofore fought the French, sure 



CHAP. IX.] AGGRAVATED WAR. 3^5 

that to fight was to conquer ; while every English sailor appre- 
hended, as the French had done, that no fighting could prevent 
defeat. The years 1812 and 1813, excepting the sea-fights, were 
almost always annals of American defeats. During the years 
1814 and 1815, the full tide of success, with one or two momentary 
counter-currents, constantly flowed in our favour ; and every 
battle by land and by water, was an American triumph, till the 
war closed in a blaze of victory on shore, with brilliant cormsca- 
tions illuminating the ocean. All these final battles took place 
sometime after a mere cessation of hostilities, by treaty, without 
the settlement of a single principle in conflict, or the slightest in- 
fluence from the Russian mediation, (so much relied upon by the 
American government,) but attributable mainly, if not altogether, 
to the successes of the navy, of American armies in Canada, and 
to the upraised spirit of the nation everywhere, gloriously crown- 
ed by victorious conclusion at New Orleans after the peace. 

On the 20th of December, 1813, a motion was submitted to 
the House of Representatives, that a committee should be ap- 
pointed to make adequate and permanent provision for the sup- 
port of all officers, soldiers and marines, disabled by wounds in 
the military service of the United States, also, for the support of 
the widows and education of the children of all officers, soldiers 
and marines fallen in the service, naval or military. This motion 
was laid upon the table, and never called up again : perhaps too 
extensive and premature, at least till the soldiers of the revolu- 
tion were provided for, or those of the war of 1812, who long 
survive it, shall come to the advantages of interval between their 
services and their rewards. 



316 CREEK CAMPAIGN. [MARCH, 1813. 



CHAPTER X. 

SOUTHERN CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE CREEK INDIANS.— ACT OF CON- 
GRESS FOR TAKING POSSESSION OF THAT PART OF LOUISIANA 
WHICH SPAIN WITHHELD AS PART OF FLORIDA.— MOBILE SEIZED BY 
GENERAL WILKINSON.— TECUMSEH AND HIS BROTHER, THE PRO- 
PHET, VISIT THE CREEKS TO ROUSE THEM TO WAR.— SPANISH CON- 
NIVANCE WITH ENGLAND FOR THIS PURPOSE.— CREEK REVOLT AND 
CIVIL WAR.— FORT MITCHELL.— INDIAN PATRIOT AND PEACE PARTY, 
THE YOUNG FOR WAR, THE OLD OPPOSE IT.— OUTBREAK.— DESUL- 
TORY MURDERS.— MASSACRE AT FORT MIMMS— GEORGIA AND TEN- 
NESSEE UNDERTAKE THEIR OWN DEFENCE.— GEORGIA MILITIA.— 
GENERALS FLOYD AND FLOURNOY. — TENNESSEE MILITIA. — GENE- 
RALS WHITE, CLAIBORNE, COFFEE, CARROLL, JACKSON.— BATTLES 
OF TALLUSHATCHEE, TALLEDEGA, ECCONOCHACCA, AND HILLA- 
BEE.— MILITIA AND VOLUNTEERS OF TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA IN- 
SUBORDINATE.— MANY OF THEM GO HOME.— CAMPAIGN SUSPENDED 
FOR WANT OF TROOPS.— CHARACTER OF SUDDEN LEVIES FOR SHORT 
SERVICE. — REINFORCEMENTS. — ANDREW JACKSON. — BATTLE OF 
EMUCHFAU OR THE HORSE-SHOE.— INDIANS SUBDUED— DISPERSED 
—SUE FOR PEACE.— WEATHERFORD SURRENDERS HIMSELF TO JACK- 
SON.— MEETING OF GENERALS PINCKNEY AND JACKSON AT TOU- 
LOUSE.— SPANISH TREATY OF 1795. — NEGOTIATED BY PINCKNEY, 
ENFORCED BY JACKSON.— REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 
ACTIONS OF THOSE TWO GENERALS— AS TO THE EFFECTS OF THE 
CREEK CAMPAIGN.— PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS ON THE 
SUBJECT. 

We have seen in the first chapter of this Historical Sketch, 
that the war was premised by the admission of the State of 
Louisiana into the Union in April, 1812, preceding the declara- 
tion of war in June. A future chapter, in another volume, will 
show its conclusion by the total defeat of the enemy at New 
Orleans, the capital of that state, in the latter end of 1814 and 
beginning of 1S15, during negotiations for peace, at Ghent, 
in Flanders. At present, our narrative takes us far from the 
banks of the great northern lakes to those magnificent south- 
western regions of the United Slates, where the modem master 
of staples, cotton, flourishes, with sugar, also, once a luxury, 
now become a necessary of life. Going from Michigan and 



CHAP. X.] SEIZURE OF MOBILE. 317 

Vermont to Alabama and Mississippi, in the great change of 
place, fifteen hundred miles from north to south, the theatre of 
action to be examined still consists of what were then territories 
sparsely peopled; now states filling with population ; then occu- 
pied by Indians with their towns or for their hunting-grounds ; 
now filled with fine cities inhabited by many of the most opu- 
lent, refined and advancing portion of this great republican 
empire and North American continental power. The prodigious 
communication and intercourse, by steam, from New Orleans and 
Mobile to Michilimackinac and St. Josephs, Chicago and Detroit, 
thence to Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, and Boston, whether 
by land or water, are evidence of its union, progression, power, 
and prosperity, which Americans have but to know to rejoice in 
the enjoyment of. 

The final, most concentrated, reiterated, desperate, and unge- 
nerous blows of Great Britain, were struck at these bountiful 
regions, with great fleets and armies, savage help in its utmost 
ferocity, and her utmost efforts to aggravate those blows by 
servile war, of which the preliminary conflict, the Indian cam- 
paign of 1813, will be the subject of this chapter. American 
vengeance was provoked to humble the Creek Indians for the 
horrible massacres with which they were instigated by English 
agency, and Spanish subserviency, to begin hostilities. 

On the 27th January, 1813, apprized of these menacing perils, 
the president, in a confidential message to the Senate, sent them a 
report of the Secretary of War, complying with their resolution of 
the 7th of that month, which led ultimately to an act of Congress 
authorizing him to take possession of a tract of country lying south 
of the Mississippi Territory and west of the Perdido. When the 
confidential proceedings on this act were made public, in October, 
1813, it was justly said that the horrible and indiscriminate butch- 
ery of men, women, and children at Tensaw (or Fort Mimms), 
with instruments of death derived immediately from Pensacola, 
and the exposed state of the southern frontiers, afforded abun- 
dant testimony of the error and misfortune attendant on the Se- 
nate's decision of this very important question. The opposition 
to Madison in the Senate, by uniting the opponents of the war 
with those of his administration, frequently prevented steps he 
deemed important. Constitutionally averse as he was to all 
illegal measures, he never was even charged or suspected of 

27* 



318 SEIZURE OF MOBILE. [APRIL, 1813. 

attempting them. And for how many imperfections of energetic 
executive action does not this pure observance of law atone ? 
Havingat last got, in February, 1S13, the permission of Congress, 
though not to the extent he desired, to dislodge the Spanish autho- 
rities from a corner of Louisiana, which they held as part of Flo- 
rida, in April, 1813, by order of the president, the present city of 
Mobile was taken from them: then a Spanish fortress overlook- 
ing northern Florida on the bay of that name, at the mouth of 
the noble river Tombigbee, flowing from settlements of the 
Chickasaw Indians, in Mississippi, nearly the whole length of 
Alabama, due south, till it empties, through Mobile Bay, into 
the Gulf of Mexico. The Bays of Pascagoula, Mobile, Perdido, 
Pensacola, Santa Rosa, St. Andrews, St. Joseph's, and Apalachi- 
cola skirt southern Alabama, along the Gulf of Mexico, east. 
Another chain of bays on that gulf, Chandeleur, Black Bara- 
taria, Timballier, Atchafalaya, Cote Blanche, Vermilion, stretch 
south as far as the Sabine Lake and river, in that aquatic region ; 
thence disputed ground beyond to the Nueces, the Grande del 
Norte, and those prodigious mountain barriers between Texas 
and Mexico, which fix by nature's most stupendous impedi- 
ments, the boundaries between the North American Anglo- 
Saxon, and the mixed Mexican and Spanish-Moorish races. St. 
Marks, on Apalachicola Bay, Pensacola, on the bay of that name, 
both opening on the Gulf of Mexico, the fortified city of St. 
Augustine, one of the oldest of American towns on the Atlantic 
ocean, and Conde, at Mobile, were Spanish strongholds in Flo- 
rida, convenient of access from sea to the English, and by land 
to the various Indian tribes, roving over immense territories, 
with their settlements and hunting-grounds, stretching from the 
Gulf of Mexico, through Alabama, Missouri, and Illinois, to 
Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. All this vast country is 
connected by gigantic links, of land and water, in natural con- 
figuration, juxtaposition, and easy intercourse. A glance on the 
map shows it, but, without attentively examining the map, it is 
impossible to appreciate its integral nationality. The permanent 
treaty of 1795 between Spain and the United States, fixing the 
southern limits of this country in Florida, and its western bound- 
ary in the bed of the river Mississippi, provides that Spain shall 
maintain peace among the Indians adjacent to the boundaries of 
Florida, and restrain, by force, all hostilities on their part, so as 



CHAP. X.] SEIZURE OF MOBILE. 3^9 

not to suffer them to attack citizens of the United States, nor the 
other Indians in their territory, and shall make no treaties but of 
peace with the Indians. 

The president, being authorized by Congress, directed General 
Wilkinson, commanding nearest to Florida, who accordingly, on 
the 15th of April, 1813, with Commodore Shaw's flotilla of gun 
boats, and 600 soldiers, took possession of Mobile. The expedi- 
tion left New Orleans the 29th of March, General Wilkinson on 
board the armed schooner Alligator, by the Bayou St. John, and 
Pass Christian, arrived at Heron, the 10th of April. Captain At- 
kinson was sent to bring off the Spanish guard and pilot from 
Dauphin Island, who were removed, the corporal and six men, 
to Pensacola. Meantime, Colonel Bowyer descended the Tensaw, 
with the diligence always characterizing that gallant officer, and 
encamped opposite the town of Mobile, with five pieces of brass 
ordnance— Commodore Shaw, making good his way round by 
sea with his flotilla of transports. The music of our drums was 
the first intimation the Spanish commandant of the ancient Fort 
of Conde, near Mobile, had of the design to dislodge him, the 
American troops having been landed and formed at night. That 
venerable fort had been once, indeed, was then, a strong place ; 
built in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, in 1780 it resisted 
for several weeks with a small garrison, an army 2000 strong 
under the Spanish General Galvez, before it honorably capitu- 
lated. At noon on the 15th of April, General Wilkinson ad- 
vanced with a column of 600 men, took post in a neighbouring 
wood in front of the fort, and sent his aid-de-camp Major Pierre, 
to demand its surrender, to which the Spanish commandant 
yielded, when the American flag was hoisted there for the first 
time. On the 17th of April, Colonel Carson dislodged a small 
Spanish post, consisting of a Serjeant and seven men from the 
east bank of the Perdido, who moved to Pensacola. Thus the 
authority of the United States was established, as by the treaty 
of Louisiana, it was right it should have been ten years before, 
to the Perdido bay and river in Florida, which peninsula did not 
follow Louisiana into the American Union, till nearly ten years 
afterwards, when taken possession of pursuant to treaty with 
Spain, by the extraordinary offspring of the war of 1812, whose 
first campaign is to be the subject of this chapter — Andrew Jack- 
son. Don Gayetano Perez, the Spanish governor, and the garrison 



320 INDIAN AGGRESSIONS. [APRIL, 1S13. 

of Mobile surrendered at Fort Conde to General Wilkinson, were 
forthwith sent in transports to Pensacola, whence Spanish con- 
nivance with English hostilities against the United States, espe- 
cially by arming and instigating the Indians, was suppressed 
twenty months afterwards by General Jackson capturing that 
Spanish fortress, preparatory to his memorable repulsion of En- 
glish invasion of Louisiana. Shortly after Wilkinson's seizure of 
Mobile, he marched with a considerable detachment to the Perdido 
river, to overawe the Indians encouraged by the Spaniards, to acts 
of hostility against Americans. Fort Conde, or Mobile, was well 
supplied with munitions of war and military stores, and presented 
a frowning battery of sixty-two pieces of ordnance when surren- 
dered to Wilkinson by too small a garrison to have made effec- 
tual resistance. An express arrived there just at the evacuation, 
advising Wilkinson that the Spanish governor of Pensacola had 
sent out runners to the Creek and Seminole Indians, with offers 
of arms, ammunition, and presents if they would attack the 
American frontier settlements on the Tombigbee and Alabama. 
To prepare for this, Wilkinson deposited a number of muskets 
with the colonels of the militia. The people, much alarmed by ru- 
mours of Indian aggressions, were erecting numerous block houses 
to retire to, as places of retreat and security. Soon afterwards 
General Wilkinson received his orders dated at Washington, in 
March, to repair to, and take command of the northern army : 
the south by the good genius of America being through a series 
of providential military changes, hereafter to be particularized, 
reserved for the command of General Jackson. Wilkinson left 
with regret places with which he had become familiar by long 
command and much experience there, to try his fortune as a 
veteran, where it began as a young man, in the north, as Gene- 
ral Dearborn's successor in command of the army, destined 
for the invasion of Canada. The south-western Indian cam- 
paign, to which Jackson was about to be called, was the 
overture to his not more complete or substantial, but better 
known and more celebrated campaign of next year against the 
flower of the English armies which chased Napoleon's mar- 
shals and brother out of Spain, followed them to the capital of 
France, and there dictating peace, left the United States not 
only single-handed, but deserted, if not detested, by nearly all 
Christendom, to make head against Great Britain. Among the 



CHAP. X.] INDIAN AGGRESSIONS. 321 

good fortunes of this country, not the least was that which under 
these circumstances inflamed a mighty enemy, intoxicated with 
triumphs, to wage unwarrantable war, that Providence enabled 
us to resist, repel and overcome by a year of victories consum- 
mated by the great success which the commander in the Creek 
campaign was there learning the art to achieve. 

The south-western campaign of 1813 was carried on mainly 
by volunteers and militia of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Terri- 
tory of Mississippi, against only Indian foes; instigated, indeed, 
and armed and supplied by English government and Spanish con- 
nivance, but without British soldiers till next year, as their allies. 
The remote inhabitants of countries almost without a mariner, 
and then with little foreign commerce or navigation, were inflamed 
to bloody combats against orders in council concerning maritime 
affairs and impressment of seamen. As parts of the American 
republic, the people of those south-western states and territories, 
with little or no local interest in the issue, fought the national battle 
with unwavering constancy ; while as instruments of a small 
island in the midst of the North Sea, three thousand miles away, 
the deluded savages bravely and recklessly performed their ruthless 
part in exterminating hostilities. Humanity shrinks not less at 
their butcheries and brutalities at the time, than at their conse- 
quence, in the expulsion of all the fierce aboriginal inhabitants 
of those beautiful and teeming regions, to banishment of tribes 
inimical to each other, compelled to live together far from then- 
native homes, in others provided for them beyond the Arkansas 
and Mississippi. History must condemn the English cruel policy 
which for gain and dominion sacrificed thousands of noble sav- 
ages in that shocking conflict. Nor can it excuse Spanish instru- 
mentality in those ungenerous hostilities. The red and black 
races still in Mexico, Cuba, and the United States, are subjects 
of much apparent transatlantic sympathy. But for millions of 
African slaves pullulating in the cotton growing regions, where 
their labour seems indispensable, cultivating lands which, in 
IS 13, were covered with Indian cornfields and settlements, 
and devoted to their hunting-grounds, England and Spain are 
answerable, who first naturalized them in America. The red race 
might be living in communion with the black and the whites in 
Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, but for European interfer- 



322 INDIAN CIVILIZATION. [JULY, 1813. 

ence. The American Declaration of Independence, more recited 
than its doctrines are generally remarked, forty years before the 
campaign of 1813, excited by English agents and acts among 
the Creeks and Cherokees, to both savage and servile outrages, 
reproached a kindred country with exciting domestic insurrection 
among us, and bringing on the inhabitants of our frontiers the 
merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is un- 
distinguishing destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. It 
has been, on the contrary, the constant endeavour of every 
administration, the obvious policy of the United States to con- 
ciliate and domesticate, enlighten, harmonize and naturalize the 
Indians. 

To-cha-lee and Chulioa, chiefs of the Cherokees, published in 
behalf of the Cherokee nation, an address prepared in council at 
Highwassee, the 6th of March, 1813, to the citizens of the United 
States, particularly to the good people living in the states of Ten- 
nessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi Terri- 
tory, in which they said, that in former wars the Indians were of 
necessity under the influence of your enemies. We shed our 
blood in their cause. You compelled them by arms to leave us ; 
and they made no stipulation for our security. After years of 
distress, we found ourselves in the power of a generous nation. 
You forgot the past, established our boundaries, provided for our 
improvement, and took us under your protection. We have 
prospered and increased, with the knowledge and practice of 
agriculture and other useful arts. Our cattle fill the forests, while 
wild animals disappear. Our daughters clothe us from spinning 
wheels and looms. Our youth have acquired knowledge of let- 
ters and figures. All we want is tranquillity. This simple recital 
of Indian improvement proceeds with strong expressions of good- 
will to the government and people of the United States, and 
hopes of their success in the contest with Great Britain. 

Such was the argument of these unhappy savages, and if con- 
tent to be incorporated in American society, with its arts, reli- 
gion and enjoyments, if qualified, but civilized independence, 
which is all that we enjoy, was preferable to their wilder and 
more vicious state ; it was the earnest desire of American govern- 
ment to ameliorate and adopt them. Confessing and deploring the 
colonial abuses which provoked Indian aversion, every effort since 
American independence, has been to quiet and domesticate these 



CHAP. X.] INDIAN NATIONS. 



323 



magnanimous children of the forest. England in both her wars on 
the United States, betrayed her savage allies to ruin. By reviv- 
ing and fomenting animosity much assuaged, and which might 
have been removed, she provoked reaction from this country by 
which more than fifty nations have been subjugated, driven 
from their desert homes, and forced to abide together in odious 
circumscription. An English ministry was once reproached by 
censorious opposition, for not resenting French interruption of 
British slave trade, which the maritime world is now disturbed 
by England to suppress. Yet what African slave now cultivates 
tropical products, in Spanish, Portuguese, or American posses- 
sions, but by act of Parliament ? What untutored savage has 
been expatriated from this country but by reaction of English 
intermeddling ? 

The Creek nation, twenty-five thousand strong, inhabited a 
region of surpassing fertility, salubrity and beauty, from the 
southern borders of Tennessee, between the Chatahouchee and 
Coosa rivers, as far south as near the Florida line : the Seminoles 
south of the Creeks, in southern Georgia, and northern Florida, 
ranging through impervious swamps to boundless marshes on the 
Gulf of Mexico ; the Choctaws and Chickasaws on the Yazoo 
and Pearl rivers in Mississippi, numbering from thirty to forty 
thousand ; the Cherokees north of the Creeks, on the south fron- 
tier of Tennessee. Indian civilization was marked by proximity 
to American power, savage barbarism by distance from it. Near- 
ly all the North American Indians speak kindred tongues, and are 
otherwise, though frequently at war among themselves, yet re- 
ducible by overruling domination to the same people, one and 
indivisible for war against the United States. They were one and 
all cultivated as English stipendiaries, and in 1813, supplied by or 
through Spanish authorities in Florida, Spain being then in alli- 
ance offensive and defensive with Great Britain, occupied by 
British armies, and governed by British councils, if not generals 
and ministers. At the same time there was no recognized min- 
ister of Spain in the United States, nor of the United States in 
Spain, owing to the distracted state of that ancient kingdom, then 
disputed between Ferdinand the Seventh, and Joseph Bonaparte. 
That controversy, according to a principle of American govern- 
ment, the disadvantage of which at that moment has been ad- 
verted to in my first chapter, deprived the United States of any 



324 TECUMSEH'S MISSION. [JULY, 1813. 

public agent in Spain, when several ministers there would have 
been useful, if they were not indispensable. According to the 
best information we had, however, and universal southern im- 
pression, the war in the south was ascribable to instigation by 
the united influence of Great Britain and Spain, operating upon 
the Indians. But for that clandestine combination, the war might 
have been confined to the northern and navigating states, for 
whose relief it was undertaken. As soon as Great Britain was 
menaced with it, the southern Indians began to move. When 
declared, the storm broke forth at a point contiguous to her insti- 
gating power, As defeat or victory in Canada fluctuated, south- 
ern hostilities assumed the hues of British vengeance and Indian 
ferocity. Supplies of all arms and munitions were discovered 
on their way from Pensacola to the Indians. Councils of war 
were held, attended by British and Spanish agents officiating toge- 
ther. Immense expenditures, tragical disasters, on new theatres 
of war ensued. Colonel Benjamin Hawkins had been for six- 
teen years Indian agent of the United States in the south-west, 
and flattered himself as well as his constituents, that he had not 
laboured in vain to wean them from savagism. The Creeks and 
Cherokees had many of them farms, wore clothing, professed 
Christianity, spoke English, and the most respectable and influ- 
ential of them were well inclined to civilization till British agents 
interloped, and put an end to that peaceable and prosperous state 
of things. A chief instrument of England for this purpose, was 
Tecumseh, whom we have seen bravely fighting at Tippecanoe 
in 1811, at Detroit in 1812, and as bravely dying in arms in 1813, 
at the battle of the Thames. He performed a patriotic and praise- 
worthy journey from the north to the south, after the massacre 
at Raisin, deemed by him and his employers the proper time to 
rouse the Indians of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, 
to another effort at emancipation. In him it was patriotic and 
praiseworthy to liberate them, if possible, from the yoke, how- 
ever gentle, which American government imposed. He can 
hardly be blamed for the last attempt of a noble chieftain, who 
seldom, if ever, practised the enormities which English agents 
stimulated: we cannot deny Tecumseh the merits of a generous 
effort and a glorious death. Addressing himself to the Creeks 
especially, he plied them not only with all the arts of eloquent 
excitement, but with the irresistible power of superstition and 



CHAP. X.] FORT MIMMS. 325 

sorcery over ignorant people, barbarians most of all. He took 
with him a fanatic called the Prophet, Tecumseh's brother, by 
whose incantations and those of many other such impostors, the 
savages were roused to madness, for a war which was to rein- 
state them in all their possessions and rights. There is some- 
thing to all men, even the most refined, elevated and enervated, 
attractive in adventurous life, the chase, the woods, the risks 
of exposure, shooting, hunting, the dangers and fatigues of kill- 
ing wild beasts, the mimicry of war. Much more seductive is 
war itself: and still much more to those whose ancestors knew 
no other recreation so delightful. Necromancy and superstition 
to charm savages to such enjoyments were artifices which Te- 
cumseh, his brother the prophet, and other demons, working with 
mystic and oracular influences over wild enthusiasts, wrought to 
the highest pitch of savage excitement. They enlisted too the 
noble aspirations of patriotism. The war was for the long-lost 
rights of Indian freemen : to restore them to liberty, emanci- 
pate them from bondage. Like the Americans of 1776, the 
French of 1790, the Spanish colonists of South America, the war 
party of the Creek nation, in revolt against their elders, assumed 
the much-abused name of patriots, and came to be known by it 
in the bloody controversy, which in a few months closed with 
the extermination of most, and the subjugation of all the rest 
of them. 

The map must be consulted for Fort Mimms, a stockade or 
blockhouse, on the Alabama river, not far from the Tombigbee, 
in south-western Alabama, at no great distance from Mobile, 
where, on the 30th August, 1813, by which time the untiring 
Tecumseh was again at the head of his followers in Ohio, 
occurred one of those dreadful Indian tragedies which have so 
often retaliated the cruelties inflicted by white men on red, by 
them horribly retorted. The massacre at Fort Mimms, in August, 
like that of the river Raisin in January, 1813, will long be remem- 
bered in the chronicles of American wrongs ; for wrongs they are, 
although our treatment of their perpetrators may seem to justify, 
as no doubt it provokes, such enormities. 

Soon after we were assembled in Congress, the latter end 

of May, 1813, Mr. Elijius Fromentin, one of the first elected 

senators from Louisiana, who traveled to Washington by land, 

through the Indian country, as there was then no better way, 

vol. i. — 2S 



326 CREEK OUTBREAK. [MAY, 1813. 

the English being all powerful by sea, and not a steamboat ply- 
ing from New Orleans, Mr. Fromentin reported that in the 
Creek nation, he fell in with a party of warriors under McQueen, 
king of the Upper Towns, who had been to Pensacola for arms 
from the Spanish Governor of West Florida, who informed the 
deputation that his instructions were to arm the nation generally, 
and, provided a majority applied to him, he would furnish them 
with arms. Meetings of the Indians were therefore to be held 
in their different towns to ascertain that war was the sense of 
a majority, that being the Spanish postulate. At the House of 
Manac, a chief of property and influence, numbers of runners 
from the north-western Indians were constantly resorting, from 
the seat of war, with much earlier intelligence of events than 
the white neighbours of the Indians had. 

There was probably not a majority of the Creeks for war. 
Most of the aged, the experienced, and the prudent were against 
it. But, as was the case in this country, the young, the ardent, 
the ambitious, the restless, were its champions. Perhaps the 
American, certainly the French, revolutions were begun against 
the sense of majorities, by resistance to not insufferable wrongs. 
Tecumsehs in all countries, not only move, but master majorities, 
and often through minorities. Urged by English and counte- 
nanced by Spanish authorities, besides their own sense of the 
comparatively less independent condition they enjoyed, than be- 
fore the Americans put some restraints on their wild indolence, 
the war party, the patriots of the Creeks, precipitated measures 
by violence and civil war between themselves and the peace party. 
Agents, white and red, from Canada, to excite and supply them, 
went to Florida. Through the instrumentality of Indian runners 
and chiefs, the belief was general, if not universal, in that country, 
that the Governor of Canada made known his wishes to the 
Governor of Florida : and at all events, in Colonel Hawkins's 
opinion, the commotions in the south-west were attributable to 
English intrigues with the Indians there. The alarm was gene- 
ral. Milledgeville, in Georgia, on the Altamaha, Columbus, on 
the Tombigbee, Nashville, in central Tennessee, on the Cumber- 
land, Knoxville, in east Tennessee, on the Holstein, were all 
alarmed and assailable. Generals Pinckney and Flournoy, com- 
manding the regular troops in that military division, were put on 
their guard, and ordered out some inadequate forces. In April, 
however, General Flournoy wrote to the Governor of Georgia 



CHAP. X.] FORT MITCHELL. 327 

from the Creek agency that he found the reports respecting their 
hostility unfounded or exaggerated; the chiefs are in council, said 
he, respecting the late outrages, and it is expected the offenders 
will be brought to justice. Colonel Hawkins, Indian agent, 
thinks there is no danger in passing to Fort Stoddart. This con- 
fidence soon proved mistaken. In July Colonel Hawkins in vain 
strove to prevent the outbreak long premeditated. The difficul- 
ties of the friendly Indians continued to increase. Nine of them 
were murdered, one a woman ; a chief was missing, another sent 
on a friendly errand was doomed by the prophet to destruction. 
The old King, Talebee, boasted of his war-clubs, bows, arrows, 
and magical powers. By satisfying the United States the well- 
disposed angered the war-party, who were resolved on re- 
sentment. The work of death and destruction began. Colonel 
Hawkins sent messengers to soothe them and to warn. "I 
hear," said he, " you have broken the treaty, danced the war- 
dance, made your clubs, but for what ? You threaten Kialijee, 
Toohawbatchee, and Cowetan. Take care how you make 
American soldiers your enemies. You cannot frighten them. 
Their cannon and muskets will be more terrible than the words 
of your prophets." The war party returned no answer to this 
expostulation. Bent on mischief, nothing but calamity would, 
tame them. Colonel Hawkins dispatched Mcintosh, a celebrated 
Indian chief, for Toohawbatchee, and requested the Governor of 
Georgia for arms for the friendly Indians ; an express was also 
sent on whose report the agent intended to act, and the go- 
vernor, if necessary, was to risk the consequences of attempting 
to crush the hostile Indians. 

The regions doomed to devastation by these malignant hos- 
tilities, were of surpassing beauty, salubrity, and productive- 
ness. What was called the Aulochewan country abounded in 
the finest lands. The woods were filled by herds of fat cattle 
plentifully subsisting on rich natural pastures, without housing 
or other food than they found themselves. No care need be 
taken of them. Fort Mitchell, the agent's residence, was not 
far from a beautiful lake, abounding with fish, and communi- 
cating with other lakes and rivers affording excellent navigation 
to the hearts of the settlements. The orange tree grew spon- 
taneously there ; melons at almost any season. The sugar- 
cane, the cotton plant, Indian corn, the richest products of a 



328 FORT MIMMS. [AUG., 1813. 

genial soil and climate might be cultivated in luxurious abun- 
dance. Fort Mitchell stood on one of those singular configu- 
rations of parts of the United States, a prairie, seven or eight 
miles wide by twenty-three miles long, like the placid lake in its 
neighbourhood, an uninterrupted expanse of productive earth. 
The Creeks had their well-built towns and villages, schools, flocks, 
tools, clothing. They were fast weaning from barbarous habits 
and propensities, when, in evil hour, they were by evil spirits 
persuaded to cast aside all the enjoyments, tokens, and morals of 
civilization ; to destroy their implements of husbandry, desecrate 
their places of worship and education, despise their decent 
clothing ; seize the tomahawk, the rifle, and the scalping knife, 
and under the dark influences of necromancers, recur, with fana- 
tical frenzy to the almost forgotten outrages of the war-club, 
and brutal gratification of a passion for destruction. 

After many isolated devastations, at length, on the 30th Au- 
gust, was perpetrated their most fearful and fatal outrage at 
Fort Minims. Indians were supplied at Pensacola, by direct 
English agency, with ammunition distributed there to leaders in 
that attack, which was to be made, as rumoured, about the full 
of the moon. There were as many as twenty stockades or forts 
scattered along both sides of the river Tombigbee, for the seventy 
miles of thinly peopled country, from Fort Stoddart to the upper 
settlements ; too great a number of forts for concentrated action 
in which the inhabitants were left off their guard in the belief that 
no serious aggression would take place. An excellent officer, 
Major Beasley, of the Mississippi Volunteers, commanded at Fort 
Mimms, which was nearly opposite to Fort Stoddart. The greatest 
number of families and property were collected in Fort Mimms; 
though there was another fort at Pierce's Mills, about a mile 
from it, and another mill at which a few soldiers were stationed 
a few miles further. A negro, taken by the Indians, but escaping, 
fled to Fort Mimms and gave the first information of the intended 
attack. Next day a half-breed and some white men, who had 
discovered the Indian trail, repeated the alarm. But none of these 
warnings were much heeded ; though some preparation was 
made to guard against a surprise. Another negro sent out to 
tend the cattle, again reported that he had seen twenty Indians. 
He was chastised for misreport. A third who saw other Indians 
afterwards, fearing the same unwelcome reception, went to 



CHAP. X.] FORT MIMMS. 329 

Pierce's Mills, instead of returning to Fort Mimms. On the 
night preceding the massacre, the dogs of the garrison, supposed 
to have smelt the Indians, by peculiar growling, gave their 
instinctive notice of danger. Had the men been as watchful 
and, may it not be said, wise ? as these animals, with instinct 
exceeding knowledge, they might have been prepared for the 
attack. A few did leave the fort and escaped. But nearly all 
remained in that strange confidence which often betrays to de- 
struction. So far did this error go, that an officer was in the act 
of preparing to punish another negro for insisting that he had 
seen Indians, when, all at once, they appeared, contrary to their 
custom, approaching openly by day, about eleven o'clock in the 
morning, and had advanced, through an open field, one hundred 
and fifty yards, to within thirty feet of the fort before they were 
discovered. So fatal was the incredulity of its doomed inmates. 
So well-devised, bold, and fortunate the plan of their blood- 
thirsty assailants. The gate, too, was open. As the sentry gave 
the alarm, the warriors, with a terrific whoop, darted in before 
it could be closed, rushed up to the port holes, and by fearless 
intrepidity, but not till after a desperate struggle in which sixty 
of the assailants were killed, in the course of several hours of 
murderous combat, hand to hand, took and burned the piace. 
Our^people surprised, confounded, and crowded, had not time to 
organize for resistance ; otherwise Indian valour could do no- 
thing against a well-prepared fortification. The commander, 
Major Beasley, was one of the first victims, shot through the body. 
He retired into the kitchen, calling to his men to take care of 
their ammunition and retreat into the house. The fort, originally 
square, had been enlarged by pickets from within, which outward 
enclosure the Indians fired. Several hundred of them, computed 
from four to seven hundred, surprised, overpowered, surrounded 
our people, encumbered by women and children, who, seeing 
the Indians in full possession of the outer fort, began to falter, 
despond, and try to escape. The savages mounted the block- 
house near the pickets, and shot down on the people within, 
firing from port-holes at their enemies in the field, who shooting 
arrows set on fire at the building which put one near the kitchen 
in a blaze, soon consumed it, and, as is supposed, the wounded 
commander, Beasley, lying there. His loss early in the action 
was a great misfortune. Our people fought with the courage 

2S* 



330 FORT MIMMS. [AUG., 1813. 

of despair. But seeing the Indians in full possession of the 
outer court, with the gates open, the kitchen burning, and other 
buildings on fire, despondency prevailed. Yet the few survivors, 
towards the end of the conflict, collected the guns of the killed 
and all the remaining ammunition and threw them into the flames 
to keep them from falling into the hands of the savages. The 
women and children took refuge in the upper story of the dwell- 
ing house, and there perished in the flames, the savages dancing 
round with shouts of exultation. They were all stark naked, 
except a flap or small clout. After women were slaughtered, their 
bodies were subject to every indecent indignity which the most 
infernal refinement of cruelty could conceive ; pregnant women 
were cut open, unborn infants tomahawked, some women scalped 
several times, many savages contending for the gratification of 
mutilating and murdering one helpless individual. The scene 
presented to the party, which, after the Indians were gone, went 
to the place and buried the dead, exceeded all description of 
horrible excesses. Hundreds of these Indians spoke English 
and were believed to have been reclaimed from barbarism. 

About an hour before sunset, the work of extermination ceased, 
and the Creeks, as usual, had their festival for a glorious victory. 
Seven commissioned officers, with about one hundred non-com- 
missioned officers and privates fell, all of the first regiment of 
Mississippi Volunteers ; 24 families of men, women and children, 
altogether about 160 souls, a few of them half-breed Indians, and 
seven friendly Indians, with 100 negroes, were in Fort Mimms, 
most of whom perished in the action, or in the flames. Between 
three and four hundred men, women and children, white, red, 
black and mulatto, were butchered ; not more than from 25 to 
30 of the whites and half-breeds escaped, and many of them 
wounded. 

Such was the work of a nation of Indians, whom the adminis- 
trations of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson and Madison, 
had been from the foundation of our government for sixteen 
years sedulously engaged in civilizing. Colonel Hawkins continu- 
ally reported that they were much improved in the arts and sen- 
timents of humanity. Without the slightest provocation, they 
took up arms with the English to assail us ; seized moments of 
unguarded liability to perpetrate diabolical outrages of English 
contrivance. English vessels with ammunition frequently at that 
time arrived at Pensacola, where the Creeks and Seminoles were 



CHAP. X.l FLIGHT TO MOBILE. 331 

supplied. A British armed schooner from the Bahamas, with 
clothing, blankets and ammunition for the hostile Indians, came 
to Pensacola soon after the massacre at Fort Mimms, when the 
Creek war began. But for the senate's resistance, Madison 
might have prevented this, and perhaps the disaster at that fort. 
Next year, without orders, Jackson, before he repaired to the 
defence of New Orleans, seized Pensacola by virtue of that self- 
preservation which belongs to all mankind, nations and indi- 
viduals, without reference to the law of treaties which forbade 
Spain her subserviency to England in those inhuman violations 
of all law. 

The mournful tale of the disaster at Fort Mimms reached the 
cantonment near Fort Stoddart, sixteen miles off next night at 
ten o'clock, and found that ill-provided place encumbered with 
women and children, who had fled affrighted from their habita- 
tions. It had before been suggested that they should be removed 
to some securer retirement. The moment the sad tidings were 
known, all took to flight at midnight, in such trepidation and 
confusion, that few carried food or clothing enough for their 
escape to Mobile. Some went by water, others by land, all be- 
wailing the calamity at Fort Mimms, where nearly all had rela- 
tives and friends, of whose fate the most dismal apprehensions 
justly prevailed. The river from Stoddart to Mobile was 
strewed with boats, the intermediate wilds with fugitives by land, 
hastening for succour to an asylum, which might not be able to 
protect, and certainly had not subsistence enough for them. It 
was feared that the Indians would soon attack Mobile : the only 
hope was that plunder and their usual debaucheries after victory 
might afford a short respite. Without prompt and unlooked-for 
assistance from Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi, the whole 
country from the Choctaws to the sea must be a desolate waste, 
abandoned to the savages, and not a white man venture to raise 
his head beyond the limits of a military garrison. Help from 
the government at Washington was out of the question. Relief 
must come from the people themselves and neighbouring states, 
in such an emergency, or not at all. But for the seizure of Mobile, 
by Wilkinson, in the spring, there would have been no place of 
refuge for our people. 

Tecumseh's first blows in the south, more than a thousand 
miles from the place of his north-western warfare, were terribly 
successful. Prevost, Brock, the Indian favourite, and Proctor, 



332 TECUMSEH. [AUG., 1813. 

did not confine their Indian subornation to Canada. It reached 
Pensacola, Bermuda and Jamaica, whence arms and ammuni- 
tion, clothing, stores and other necessaries were exported and im- 
ported, for the Seminoles, and the Creeks as well as their northern 
savage allies. The long arm of Great Britain extended from the 
Raisin to the Tombighee. The cruelties at the latter in August, 
were part of the system and scale of hostilities, which, in January, 
sacrificed hundreds of brave Kentuckians at the former. It was 
after the massacre at the River Raisin, that Tecumseh made his 
pilgrimage of superstitious enthusiasm to arrange another mas- 
sacre at Fort Mimms : and thus far his constant assurance to the 
savages everywhere, that they could if they would conquer the 
Americans, had been wonderfully successful. Why not vanquish 
them and free ourselves, said Tecumseh, from their yoke, their 
spinning wheels, ploughs, schools and clothing, emblems of our 
subjugation and disgrace, fetters on our limbs and our freedom ? 
Why doubt our ability to vanquish them ? We have done it in 
the north ; at Detroit, and at the river Raisin we conquered them 
with ease and with glorious slaughter. Driven out of Michigan, 
their only remnant of a defeated army is hiding in Fort Meigs, 
besieged by our English allies, who assure us of its fall. My 
followers are at hand, whenever the great guns reduce that last 
retreat of the long knives to surrender, as they did at Raisin, my 
followers are at hand to repeat our enjoyments and vengeance at 
Fort Meigs. Our great father over the great water will never 
enslave or disturb us. Our villages will be undisturbed, our hunt- 
ing-grounds unlimited by him and his people. They supply us 
with arms, with drinks, with blankets, with tobacco, and ask no- 
thing in return. They do not try to convert us to their customs, 
or drive us from our homes. It is the Americans we have to 
contend with, not the English, but a rapacious people, our 
eternal foes, with whom the English are again at war, and 
whom with our help they can and will drive from all the lands 
usurped from us by their never-ending encroachments. When 
England resolved on a war of unwarrantable severity, and sent 
Tecumseh on this mission, the south-west was the place deemed 
most vulnerable. That was always Jackson's sagacious opinion, 
realized next year by the grand invasion of Louisiana. While 
we were waging border war by little incursions on frontier forts 
and detatched places in Canada, Great Britain resolved on con- 
tinental and terrific operations. Indians and slaves were her 



CHAP. X.] BRITISH PLANS. 333 

fulcrum, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Champlain, on which 
the lever of transatlantic force was to work, to dispossess the 
United States of their southern and western territories from Flo- 
rida, including all Louisiana, to the shores of Ontario. From that 
human fulcrum, Great Britain wielden inhuman war, so pro- 
claimed by herself, against a kindred people, large numbers of 
whom nevertheless revered her as the bulwark of piety and civili- 
zation. Such was the enormous magnitude, enormous in the 
means and in the end, the great scale of operations, by which Eng- 
land was to throw back the United States to the period of Wash- 
ington's administration, when she withheld the frontier posts, in 
violation of the peace of 1783. In 1S03 the United States pur- 
chased Louisiana by what the conquerors of France might pro- 
nounce a fraudulent title to Spanish property. The Indians and 
the slaves were to be instruments for restoring all those vast 
dominions to former owners, at any rate to dislodge the United 
States. Who can read the modern history of Poland, Italy, Flan- 
ders, the East and West Indies, and doubt the design of Great 
Britain to hem this country within the Ohio, west, bounded by 
hordes of savages under English protectorate, and by the sea, 
east, commanded by British fleets ? It was the belligerent right 
of Great Britain to do so, as it is the duty of American history to 
expose the daring and dreadful policy by which that .right was 
to be realized. The war of 1812 provoked and defeated that 
great attempt. Thirty years of peace, the gain of that war, have 
enlarged, enriched and strengthened the American Union with 
many states, carved out of the regions then contended for, with 
many millions of masters and slaves to cultivate the exuberant 
soil, till now a war of staples and slavery is threatened by the 
Texas question, instead of the war of savages and slaves which 
then laid waste those regions. 

The massacre of Fort Mimms at once precipitated these de- 
signs to a crisis. The people and the governments of the con- 
tiguous states, Georgia and Tennessee, and of those convenient, 
South and North Carolina, instantly acted with excellent decision, 
before it was possible to furnish the means, hardly to give orders 
from the seat of federal government. In war, the well-being of 
popular government requires that each sovereignty act in its 
own sphere, and perform the constitutional duty prescribed to it. 
Irregularities of action betray infirmities which are not inherent 
in the system. The communities and governments of the states 



334 TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS. [SEPT., 1813. 

of Georgia and Tennessee faced the emergency with alacrity and 
energy, similar to what was displayed in Ohio, Kentucky and 
Pennsylvania. If Massachusetts had done so, British power 
would have disappeared from this continent. At the same 
time, however, without disaffection, popular or military refusal 
to march anywhere, the difficulties and delays of hasty levies for 
short terms, with still greater insubordination than at the north, 
disturbed the southern operations. Yet such is the power of popu- 
lar good will that the greatest commander of that war, General 
Jackson, sprang from a spontaneous meeting of the people at 
Nashville, on the 17th of September, 1813; immediately seconded 
by act of the legislature of Tennessee, on the 27th of that month, 
one week after the popular impulse, appropriating §200,000 and 
3,500 militia or volunteers, placed at Jackson's disposal to carry 
war wherever he might deem proper to inflict condign punish- 
ment on the enemy who perpetrated the massacre at Mimms, 
ravaged and threatened their borders. The federal government 
soon adopted the men and reimbursed the money. Riddance of 
the country from savages theretofore the terror, if not the masters 
of it, was mainly effected by local, popular and state action, con- 
summated by operations of the federal government. The part 
each one performed, the appropriate function of each, are lessons 
of that conflict which cannot be too durably impressed on the 
American mind. While it is one of the most unquestionable and 
gratifying demonstrations of the war of 1812, that the states saved 
the United States in several emergencies, it is equally true that 
excessive state or popular action embarrassed and endangered 
the Union ; and that it is by the harmonious adjustment of all the 
elements, popular, state and federal, that national safety, dignity 
and vindication are accomplished. If obliged to wait the orders, 
forces and contributions of the federal government, the Creek 
war would never have been crushed as it was in one victorious 
campaign. Yet that campaign proved, even without state or 
popular disaffection, that something more than six months militia 
and volunteers is indispensable to general safety and welfare. In 
the fiscal operations of American confederated government, its 
direct and unobstructed action produced revenues which paid 
not only the expenses of the war, and all its debts, but prior 
obligations. In military operations, the American force, although 
divided between federal and state sovereignty, is adequate to 
every exigency, when well administered by the federal, and not 



CHAP. X.] TALLUSHATCHEE AND TALLADEGA. 335 

unconstitutionally resisted by state authority. The war of 1S12 
exhibited to advantage that balanced and complicated machinery 
of popular government, which, least understood and most dispa- 
raged in Europe, is apt to be contemned where it is incompre- 
hensible. The defects and hinderances which appeared, both east 
and south, in the war faculties of American government, were 
not in the machinery, but the workmen, whose deficiencies were 
often glaring, whether governors or soldiers. 

On the 3d of November, General Coffee, detached by General 
Jackson to the Tallushatchee towns, with his brigade of 900 
men, crossed Coosey river at the fish-dam ford not far from 
Tenislands — the mounted riflemen under Colonel Cannon, the 
cavalry commanded by Colonel Allcorn, the action commenced 
by Captain Hammond and Lieutenant Patterson's companies — 
attacked the savages near their town, soon after sunrise, routed 
and either killed or captured 200 of them, who fought with 
savage fury, and met death without shrinking or complaining, 
no one asking to be spared, but fighting around and in their dwell- 
ings, to which they were driven, as long as they could stand or 
sit. In consequence of flying to their houses and mixing with 
their families, some of their squaws and children were uninten- 
tionally killed or wounded, to the great regret, said General 
Coffee, of every officer and soldier of the detachment. Not a 
single warrior escaped to tell the news : eighty-four women and 
children were captured. The American loss was five killed and 
forty-one wounded, a number with arrows, which the Indians 
shot in the intervals between firing and reloading their guns. 
On this first blow, General Jackson wrote to Governor Blount : 
We have retaliated for the destruction of Fort Mimms. On the 
7th of November, 1S13, he followed up this by another severe 
blow. Learning that Lashly's fort (Talladega) about thirty 
miles below his encampment, was threatened by the Creeks 
encamped near it, the general, leaving his baggage-wagons and 
all other impediments behind, crossed the Coosa at Ten Islands, 
and resting for the night within six miles of the enemy, without 
waiting for General White, whom he had dispatched an express 
for, at sunrise next morning attacked the Indians within a quarter 
of a mile of the fort. After a sharp conflict they were totally 
routed, two hundred and ninety slain, and Jackson thought that 
his success would have equaled Coffee's by killing every one of 
them, but for a momentary fa uxpas of his militia, quickly made 



336 HILLABEE AND AUTOSSEE. [NOV, 1813. 

good, however, by a reserve of cavalry kept in hand by General 
Jackson, and soon after atoned for by good conduct of the militia 
themselves. Nor was General White idle. On the 18th No- 
vember, 1813, with 300 of his mounted Tennessee volunteers 
under Colonel Burch, and 300 Cherokees under Colonel Mor- 
gan, he surprised, surrounded and captured 251 Creeks at the 
Hillabee towns, killing sixty-five with the bayonet, but sparing 
all who held up a white flag of surrender, without losing one of 
our men. The troops under General White visited the very 
heart of the Creek nation where the red sticks for war were first 
distributed. On the 29th November, 1813, General Floyd, with 
950 Georgia militia, and between three and four hundred friend- 
ly Indians, attacked the Creeks at Autossee on the Tallapoosa, 
their largest and best town, the Creek metropolis, containing 
four hundred regularly built houses, constructed on consecrated 
ground, according to their barbarous rites, for which they fought 
with great but unavailing valour, presenting themselves at every 
point with fanatical bravery. The friendly Indians, the Cowetans 
under Mcintosh, and Toohabatchians, under Mad Dog's son, 
also fought at that battle with dauntless intrepidity. Warriors 
from eight to ten towns, like the Greeks in nations before Troy, 
headed by kings and princes, contended for Autossee ; where 
one king and another king's brother were among the slain, and 
four hundred houses, filled with valuable contents, reduced to 
ashes. The Indians, in order to rescue their dead from falling 
into the hands of the Americans, threw them piled in heaps along 
the bank of the river, thence to be carried away or otherwise 
saved, if possible : more faithful to decent solemnities than the 
English, who repeatedly left their dead unburied to the care of 
their enemies. The American loss in that affair was eleven 
killed and fifty-four wounded. 

On the 23d of December, 1813, Brigadier-General Claiborne 
attacked Ecconochaca, on Holy-Ground, a town of 200 houses, 
occupied by a large body of Creeks, commanded by Weathers- 
ford, a half-breed chief, prominent at the massacre of Fort Mimms, 
who, being aware of our approach, chose his own position, but 
was put to flight, with the loss of thirty men killed, and the 
town burned, containing very large quantities of stores and pro- 
visions. Next day General Claiborne burned another Indian 
town of sixty houses, the residence of Weatherford, Francis and 
the Choctaw Sinquister's son, who were all three prophets ; the 



CHAP. X.] GOVERNOR OF PENSACOLA. 337 

conflagration of their consecrated towns, and devastation of their 
crops, serving to disenchant the victims of these impostors. What 
was much more important here, however, was the capture of 
written evidence of Spanish interference in the war at this 
charmed town. It was one of those sequestered nearly inaccessible 
fastnesses in the centre of swamps, environed by ravines, which it 
was extremely difficult to approach, on the Alabama, above the 
mouth of the Cahawba, about eighty-five miles above Fort 
Stoddert. Three Shawnees were killed, a number of boats 
burned, and an important letter from Manrique, the Governor of 
Pensacola, to the Creeks, dated there the 29th of September, 
1813, taken and sent by General Claiborne to Governor Blount. 
The Spanish governor writes to the savages that he had heard 
with great satisfaction by their letters of August, of the advan- 
tages the brave warriors had gained over their enemies ; and 
had represented to the captain-general at Havana the request 
they made of him for arms and munitions, which I hope, wrote 
the governor, he will send me. As soon as he does, you shall be 
informed. I am thankful for the provisions and warriors you 
have generously offered with which to retake Mobile, which 
you ask me if we have given up to the Americans. I answer 
no : but at present I cannot profit by your kind offer, as we 
are not at war with them. They did not take Mobile by force, 
but purchased it from the wretch in command. As it does not 
belong to the Americans, their possession gives them no title 
to it. Wherefore your proposal to burn the town would injure 
not them, but the Spanish owners. I have directed presents to be 
given to the bearers of your letter, and remain for ever your good 
father and friend. With Proctor's baggage, captured on the 
Thames, were found numerous letters from various British 
officers, written in the north at the same time that this Spanish 
treachery was in progress in the south, all this detected corre- 
spondence, north and south, turning chiefly on the English reli- 
ance on Indian help. One of the letters from Robert McDouall to 
Proctor says, " our Indians prove themselves right worthy and 
right useful auxiliaries. Macbeth says, ' 'tis the eye of child- 
hood that fears a painted devil.' But it is so far lucky that our 
opponents are mere infants in the sublime art of war. As you 
are, perhaps, encumbered with too many mouths, you might pre- 
vail on two or three hundred more of your swarthy warriors to 
vol. 1. — 29 



338 ANDREW JACKSON. [OCT., 1813. 

join us here. They would be invaluable under our present cir- 
cumstances." Another such letter from the half-breed Elliot to 
Proctor says, " eight Munceys left us to reconnoitre at the Miami 
Rapids, and yesterday returned with a scalp." What may be 
called this cross fire between the English Canadian, and Span- 
ish Floridian authorities, was unintermitted. On the 26th of 
November, Lieutenant-Colonel Bowyer wrote from Mobile to 
General Claiborne, " I have this moment received a letter from 
Captain Alexis, commanding at Mobile Point, stating that a large 
British expedition has arrived at Pensacola, consisting of seven 
sail of vessels and two bomb vessels ; some of the brigs have 200 
men on board. The communication to Pensacola by land is cut 
off by a large body of Indians." 

This scarcely concealed concert of action between the Spanish 
colonial and English authorities was continued throughout all the 
years 1813 and 1814, until broken up by General Jackson, as 
part of his plan for preserving New Orleans. Not only did the 
United States stand alone in the contest with Great Britian, with- 
out aid or even the good will of any other nation ; but Spain was 
in offensive alliance with England against us, at least as far as 
lending her ports and governors, with supplies of arms, to minister 
to the most flagrant annoyance England inflicted. 

Disabled by a broken arm, from a wound received in one of 
those murderous quarrels of common occurrence on motley peo- 
pled frontiers, where men, women and children lived under arms, 
whose constant use occasioned their frequent abuse, Jackson, 
panting for martial adventure, having long been the commanding- 
general of the Tennessee militia, when nearly fifty years old started 
from his couch to overtake renown. From a sick chamber, 
mounting his horse, he plunged, at the head of undisciplined 
bands, into untrodden deserts and swamps, known only to the 
wild landlords of those haunts ; whence they issued to terrify the 
borders of several states, holding their towns and seats of govern- 
ment in perpetual alarm of Indian marauding forays. Marching 
his troops over mountains and great rivers, penetrating deep 
morasses and savage sequestrations, Jackson outstripped in speed 
the marvelously swift, and in stratagem the wiliest of barbarians. 
He chased from their hiding places, crushed in their consecrated 
towns, vanquished, humbled, and annihilated the fighting men of 
the fiercest clan of more than fifty Indian tribes, and reduced the 



CHAP. X.] MILITIA. 339 

remnant to abject submission, breaking the Indian power on this 
continent forever. Three prophets were killed, one Monohoe, 
by a bullet in the mouth, as if to falsify his vaticination, and 
punish an impostor, who promised invulnerability to all his 
followers. Warriors, princes, and kings fell under grapeshot and 
the bayonet. Many large and well-constructed, consecrated 
towns, the abodes of kings and prophets, flourishing settlements, 
with all their cornfields, crops and abundance of provisions, were 
conflagrated. The torch consumed the homes, a conqueror's 
hoof trampled upon the ashes of a vanquished people, driven 
at last to their admirable entrenchment at the Horse-Shoe, or 
Emuchfau, where in desperate encounter their fort was stormed 
and they were extirpated, some in cold blood the day after the 
battle. The barbarous but sonorous words of Taladega, Autossee, 
Emuchfau, Enotichopo, Tokopeka, more euphonious than most 
English names of places, gave titles to battles: towns called Oak- 
fuskee, Hillabee, Eufalle, Coweta, Touchabatche, Haithlawalee, 
on noble streams designated as Tombigbee, Coosa, Cahawba, Ala- 
bama, Apalachicola, were the scenes of these campaigns, where 
now hundreds of thousands of white masters and black slaves 
cultivate, the cotton that clothes the world, holds the Eastern and 
Southern United States together, and colonizes Great Britain to 
their staples, commerce, products, navigation and manufactures. 
The Creek or southwestern campaign, which lasted about six 
months, from the massacre at Fort Mimms, the 30th August, 
1813, to the storming of the Horse-Shoe the 28th March, 1814, 
was conducted mostly by the volunteers and militia of Georgia 
and Tennessee. But few regular soldiers took part in it. Nearly 
the whole service was obtained from fluctuating and irresponsi- 
ble levies, eager for enterprise and fond of exploit, but averse to 
obedience, intractable to discipline, incapable of fortitude, dis- 
daining patience, defying control. Militia are like the feudal 
parade by knights' service, before war became a modern science 
with gunpowder, firearms, and standing armies, when every 
man was bound to serve his quarantine of forty days, equipped 
and mounted at his own expense, and choosing their own dukes 
or leaders. Such was the only legitimate feudality, upon which 
royal encroachments and usurpations continually trespassed, till 
the primitive militiaman became a mercenary and veteran soldier 
under leaders not of his choice. It was a sort of revival of the 



340 JACKSON'S BATTLES. [OCT., 1813. 

first military tenure which, at the outbreak of the French Revo- 
tion, attracted enthusiastic volunteers to the field, who, from their 
own ranks, selected and promoted future marshals, several of them 
with more courage and talents than their vanquisher, who, at the 
great battle of Waterloo, crowned his fortunate career by con- 
quering their immense emperor. Such was war at first, and 
such it will always be. The splendid and squalid chivalry of 
the middle ages intervened, the admiration of modern romance 
and burthen of song. Between the slight beginning and arbi- 
trary end of military tenure, which is the happy republican 
American mean ? Volunteers and militia for short terms, im- 
perfectly organized, all, according to the judgment of Washington 
and Jackson, are infirm of purpose and unfit for reliance. Yet, 
like juries in courts of justice, they are the basis of the whole. 
With these raw materials, Jackson achieved his bright career. 
Without probably having ever heard a volley of musketry, or 
knowledge of arms beyond a duel, a brawl, perhaps an Indian 
surprise ; without any knowledge but from the tuition of mother- 
wit, but without fear either physical or moral, bold to despe- 
ration, yet wary to the utmost discretion, ferocious as a tiger 
in battle, gentle as a lamb in victory, serious, studious, inde- 
fatigable, and infinite in precaution, that extraordinary man was 
capable of prodigies of prowess. History hardly records two 
such sanguinary triumphs within twelve months, as Jackson's at 
Emuchfau and New Orleans. Much more numerous armies 
have fought with much greater slaughter. But, in the first, to use 
his own words, he exterminated his red enemy, and in the last 
routed his white enemy, with disproportion of destruction unex- 
ampled. The ratio of deaths when he stormed the Indian en- 
trenchments, and when the English attempted to storm his lines, 
was nearly three hundred of his enemies killed to a single one of 
his soldiers. Assailant and defendant, he had this transcendent 
success. Indian wars schooled him for European ; his untried 
sword, fleshed in the blood of red men, was dyed deep in that 
of whites. Nothing was wanting to his amazing triumphs, but 
that Wellington instead of Packenham, as was at first intended, 
should have headed the invasion of Louisiana, that Jackson 
might tear from the brow of Napoleon's conqueror, the laurels of 
Waterloo. The Creek campaign of 1813 brought forth those 
striking features of masculine and even mighty character, after- 



CHAP. X.] ANDREW JACKSON. 341 

wards, through life and death, so powerfully developed ; a com- 
bination of wisdom without learning, passion with gentleness, 
animosity with benevolence, devotion with destruction, homi- 
cide with homily, seldom, if ever, seen in any man, and forming 
one of Roman or remote antiquity. Jackson wore the helmet 
with the cowl, like some mitred warrior of the darkest age, or, 
still further from present temperaments, like the Roman dictator, 
first as high priest, sacrificing to the gods, then as military chief 
destroying all enemies. Description is unequal to represent either 
the wild scenery of this campaign, or the wilder exploits of the 
man, without a relative and without a fear, a solitary man of 
faith, like the Roman centurion's faith, greater than all other 
men's, entire faith in God and in his country, incapable of doubt, 
insensible to danger, triumphant over every obstacle, not except- 
ing death, and accomplishing undertakings for which science or 
ordinary talents would have proved of no avail. The general 
of such troops, in such hostilities, must be his own aid-de-camp, 
adjutant, commissary, clerk and composer of constant written 
appeals to the passions of his own camp, often more formidable 
than his enemies. Sharing all their privations, cheerful in hard- 
ship, cultivating, in every way, the regard of his men, Jackson, 
nevertheless, was condemned to perpetual commotions, revolts, 
and jeopardy. Individuals, companies, regiments, brigades, 
deserted in open day and in open defiance of his authority. 
After every resort to perilous attempts at control, he was forced 
to try the unheard-of severity of executing a militiaman, sen- 
tenced by court martial to death, in the midst of the wilderness. 
Even that fatal rigour did not intimidate the soldiery, whose 
masses melted almost into dissolution, leaving hardly more than 
the general and other officers, at the mercy of the remorseless 
savages in the desert. Before the volunteers and militia quite 
disappeared, Jackson contrived to make another excursion into the 
Indian settlements, where, by a series of attacks on the 22d and 
23d January, 1814, he routed them again with the loss of 1S9 
warriors left dead on the field, besides many more killed and 
wounded. It was in these actions that his most distinguished 
pupils, Generals Coffee and Carroll, with a few other noble-spirited 
officers, deserted by their men, large numbers of whom had gone 
home in spite of every exertion by persuasion or force to retain 
them, or to supply their places in time — Generals Coffee and Car- 

29* 



342 INDIAN SUBJUGATION. [DEC, 1813. 

roll, with a few other officers, embodied themselves and fought in 
a corps of volunteers, without privates. It was there that Lieu- 
tenant Armstrong ejaculated those words of heroic inspiration, 
which, like Lawrence's on ship-board, become national rallying 
terms. After, with his own hands, assisted by his men, dragging 
cannon to the top of an eminence, and there gallantly serving it, 
Armstrong, when shot down, called to his comrades, " My brave 
fellows, some of you must fall, but you must save the cannon." 
An expression somewhat similar, applied to the Union, was, long 
after, Jackson's happy inspiration. To fall or even to speak well 
for a country, seldom fails to be remembered, but is almost 
always rewarded, whether the patriot be living or dead, by 
national plaudits, favours of government, historical memorials, 
and the admiration of mankind. 

By all these reverses the Creeks, deprived of large numbers of 
their warriors, many of their towns and settlements, much of 
their confidence in themselves and their false prophets, were re- 
duced to great distress, and took refuge at last in intrenchments, 
where their final overthrow was completed in the following 
March by Jackson's storming their fortress at the junction of the 
Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers. 

Not till they were nearly extirpated, did the brave savages, 
seduced from partial civilization back to their horrid lives, begin 
to perceive the madness which tempted them to European alli- 
ances, much worse than to be conquered by Americans. As 
long as they were of any use, England and Spain persisted in this 
cruel instigation. Without the least cause for dissatisfaction, the 
northern and southern Indians, over a space of 1500 miles from 
Toronto to Pensacola, were confederated in shocking hostilities, 
which ended in their subjection, dispersion and extinction or de- 
portation. The gallant and indignant south-west succeeded not 
only in humbling the savages, but eventually in the signal dis- 
comfiture at New Orleans of those who put the tomahawk and 
scalping knife in the hands of ignorant barbarians, till then, by 
many years of assiduous culture, soothed to tranquillity and pro- 
gressive in civilization. The second seizure of Pensacola from 
Spain, in 1817, and execution of two British subjects, hung by 
Jackson for intermeddling with the Florida Indians, without either 
Great Britain or Spain retaliating for such extreme measures, 
the justice of which could not be gainsaid, were but parts of the 



CHAP. X.] MILITIA DISBAND. 343 

sequel and retribution for English and Spanish misdemeanor there 
in 1S13. It was not only Jackson's design, but he had made 
the preparatory reconnoissance, and taken the necessary steps, 
for carrying this reaction as far as the capture of Havana. His 
bold and far-sighted schemes, few of whose most desperate enter- 
prises ever failed, to deprive both Spain and England of the 
finest island in the world for their united instigation of savages 
and slaves to ravage the United States, may yet be penalty to be 
paid for European injustice to America in the year 1813. 

After the battles of Tallishatchee and Talladega, the army of 
General Jackson crumbled to pieces. Nearly the whole of his 
volunteer infantry returned home, insisting that their time of ser- 
vice expired on the 10th of December, two months after their 
rendezvous at Nashville. The general did not discharge them, 
but left the decision with the Governor of Tennessee. The 
force remaining at Fort Strother, Ten Islands of Coosa, amounted 
to about 1500 men, chiefly drafted militia ; nearly the whole 
entitled to discharge in less than a month. Not more than 
150 or 200 (attached to the general personally, and remaining 
through motives of affection) were left with him. The brigade of 
cavalry volunteers and mounted riflemen, under the command of 
Colonel Coffee, being ordered into the settlements to recruit their 
horses for a few days and procure new ones, only half, perhaps 
800, appeared at the day and place of rendezvous; and of these not 
more than 600 would consent to stay : about half of this last 
number old volunteer cavalry,the rest newly-raised mounted men. 
Yet General Jackson was ordered by General Pinckney to garri- 
son and maintain every inch of ground he gained, while thus 
all the active exertions of the campaign were paralyzed. — 
General Cocke returned to east Tennessee, to collect a new levy ; 
General Roberts from west Tennessee, marched out about 
250 men. Colonel Carroll, inspector-general of the army, five or 
six hundred : but to serve not longer than three months. With 
this system of short service, wretched, inefficient and expensive 
above all others, Jackson still hoped to occupy till spring the 
ground he had won ; but had no army sufficient to effect the com- 
plete discomfiture and prostration of the Creek power, becoming 
evtry day a work of greater difficulty. The English had appeared 
in force at Pensacola ; seven sail, having troops on board, be- 
sides two bomb vessels. Orleans was menaced; Mobile in great 



344 CREEK CAMPAIGN. [1S13. 

danger. The force on the Tombigbee remained stationed there, 
the 3d regiment of regulars ascending the Alabama, was called 
thither also, which gave the Creeks breathing time, and reduced 
the force necessary to crush them. There was every reason to 
apprehend that Augustine would be occupied by British troops, 
and from all points arms, ammunition, men and leaders pushed to 
the aid of the upper and middle Creeks ; and that the Seminoles 
with runaway negroes among them, would be turned loose upon 
the sea coast of Georgia. About the end of the year 1813, Gene- 
ral Jackson was also extremely short of provisions, which General 
Claiborne was transporting to him. General Floyd was on the 
Tallapoosa about 80 miles from Jackson, who had few reliable 
men left with him besides Captain Gordon's company of spies, 
and Captain Deadrick's artillery; altogether not more than 150 
old troops. He called loudly for men enlisted for the campaign, 
or at least for six months' service. At last, Colonel William's regi- 
ment, the 39th regulars, twelve-month's men, were ordered to 
his assistance. 

The south-western campaign of constant and complete vic- 
tories was no series of either cheap, rapid, or easy conquest. 
The resistance of the Circassians to Russia, in Caucasus, of the 
Aftghans to Great Britain, in India, of the Florida Indians, a few 
of whom for many years foiled the United States, and in the 
year 1813, Spanish guerilla resistance to the armies of France, 
which well-informed Spaniards believe would have been more 
effectual without English assistance, when the best French troops 
and officers were withdrawn for the invasion of Russia, show 
what a united and exasperated people can do, however compara- 
tively few, unskilled in war, and unprovided with its materials, 
against the most imposing invader. Handfuls of martial men, 
defending wild, wooded and mountainous regions, are as effective 
and formidable in little warfare, as great and combined armies 
for great warfare. The downfall of the Creek Indians was attri- 
butable, like Napoleon's, to indomitable and overweening con- 
fidence. If content to roam the wilderness in small bands, and 
be assassins instead of warriors, they would have been longer 
invincible, might indeed have been crowned with success, and at 
all events could have protracted hostilities till another year, 
when a large British army landed upon their shores. And it 
was uncertain where its attack would take place. 



CHAP. X.] CREEK CAMPAIGN. 345 

Jackson's high temper was much excited by the difficulties he 
encountered : not those of the battle or even the camp, so much as 
from the inherent vice of short levies, frequent changes, and the 
never-failing disadvantages of reliance on mere voluntary soldiers. 
In his first general orders, issued before he left Nashville, strongly 
inculcating subordination, obedience and discipline, he endea- 
voured to rouse southern pride by holding up northern militia 
misconduct to reprobation. But he found his own career arrested 
by the same infirmity, though it appeared in a somewhat different 
form. The high standing of Tennessee for patriotism is tarnished, 
said he, by miscreants, whose sole object is popularity and aggran- 
dizement. In these unmeasured terms did he denounce following 
popularity in the first stage of a career, which endowed him with 
more of it than fell to the share of any other man of his time. 

In a letter to General William Cocke, a venerable gentleman 
of sixty-five, who attended Jackson in his roughest encounters, 
you have seen, said the indignant general, how these would-be 
patriots, these town-meeting boasters, men who will not act 
themselves, but find fault with everything, have been destroying 
their country. I find that those who talk most of war, and 
make the most bustle about injured rights at home, are the last 
to step forward in vindication of those rights. Patriotism is an 
appendage which they wear as a coquette does a ribbon, merely 
for show, to be laid aside, or applied, as necessity may require. 
In this language lay the germs of personal enmities, which all his 
triumphs could not soften ; but which he wisely defied with as 
littlo hesitation as he did firearms in battle. With these views of 
the difficulties of that campaign, corresponding with the experi- 
ence of all military enterprises by raw troops, especially those 
whose time of service elapses before they can be disciplined, yet 
the basis, if not the bulwark of national defence, we may pass 
to its conclusion. It became indispensable to strengthen Jackson 
with militia, drafted from North and South Carolina, before offen- 
sive operations could be resumed in Alabama. 1200 men from 
NorthCarolina,commandedby ColonelPearson, brother of Joseph 
Pearson, one of the members of Congress from that state, with 
part of the 8th regiment of regular infantry, one rifle company, 
and two troops of dragoons, were stationed at Fort Hawkins, and 
at the different forts erected by General Floyd in other parts of 
the Creek nation. Still, supplies were deficient on which the 



346 BATTLE OF EMUCHFAU. [JAN., 1814. 

best and bravest soldiers are dependent for success ; and which 
were extremely difficult of procurement and transportation in 
those rude regions, without roads or other common means. At 
length, however, all General Pinckney and General Jackson's 
arrangements were completed : and shortly before Congress ad- 
journed that session, we received at Washington the characteristic 
dispatches of both these generals, with the joyful, though dreadful 
end of the Creek war. While the sigh of humanity, said General 
Pinckney in his official letter to Governor Peter Early, of Georgia, 
while the sigh of humanity will escape for profuse effusion of 
human blood, which results from the savage principle of our 
enemy, neither to give nor accept quarter — with acknowledg- 
ment to the military talents of General Jackson, supported by 
the distinguished valour and good conduct of the troops he 
commanded, we have ample cause of gratitude to the Giver of 
all victory for thus continuing his protection to our women 
and children, who would otherwise be exposed to the indiscrimi- 
nate havoc of the tomahawk, and all the horrors of savage war- 
fare. In such humane, yet determined terms, wrote one of these 
excellent officers. From the battle-ground in the bend of the Talla- 
poosa, the other, General Jackson, wrote, I reached the head near 
Emuchfau, called by the whites the Horse-Shoe, on my expedition 
to the Tallapoosa yesterday. I found the strength of the neigh- 
bouring towns, Oakfuskee, Oakehoga, New Yaacau, Hillibees,the 
Fish-pond and Eufalee towns, to the number, it is said, of 1000 
collected, expecting our approach. It is difficult to conceive a- 
situation more eligible for defence than they had chosen, or 
rendered more secure than by the skill with which they erected 
their breastwork; extending from five to eight feet high across 
the point, so that a force approaching it would be exposed to a 
double fire, while they lay in perfect security behind. Deter- 
mining to exterminate them, Jackson attempted to carry the 
place by other means than storming it, before he gave the 
order for assault, for which the men were waiting with impa- 
tience and hailed with acclamation. The history of warfare 
furnishes few instances of more brilliant attack; the regulars, led 
by their intrepid and skilful commander, Colonel Williams, and 
the gallant Major Montgomery, the militia of the venerable 
General Doherty's brigade, with a vivacity and firmness which 
would have done honour to regulars, the whole in the midst of 



CHAP. X.] BATTLE OF EMUCHFAU. 347 

a tremendous fire, stormed the works. 557 Indians were left 
dead in the peninsula, a great number killed by the horsemen 
attempting to cross the river, who concealed themselves under 
its banks. The fighting continued five hours, till night. Sixteen 
Indians were killed next day who had concealed themselves. 
Not more than twenty escaped : 250 prisoners, all women and 
children but two or three men, were taken. Our loss was 25 killed 
and 106 wounded. Thus, as Jackson wrote, the massacre at 
Fort Mimms was retaliated, the Creek warriors exterminated, 
their power forever broken. In order to get to Emuchfau he 
had to open a passage from the 24th to the 27th of March, of more 
than fifty-two miles over the ridges, dividing the two rivers, 
before he reached the ground of his former battles on the 22d 
and 23d of January. Nature seldom affords such a place for 
defence, nor did barbarians ever render one more secure by art 
than Emuchfau. Their works were compact, strong and high, 
with double rows of port holes artfully arranged in their wall, 
commanding a peninsula of from eighty to a hundred acres. 
They maintained the contest through the port-holes, muzzle to 
muzzle, welding some of their balls to the bayonets of our mus- 
kets, fighting to the last with the bravery of despair. The whole 
margin of the river was strewed with Indians slain, as at New 
Orleans the front of Jackson's lines was covered with English. — 
Among the dead was found Monshoee, the prophet, killed by a 
grape shot in the mouth. Two other prophets were also killed. 
The Cherokees with Jackson had 18 killed and 36 wounded, the 
friendly Creeks 5 killed and 1 1 wounded ; for their civil war en- 
dured from first to last of this contest. Williams' regular regiment 
had 53 wounded and 19 killed, among them Major Montgomery, 
Lieutenants Somerville and Moulton. Captain Bradford, of the 
17th regiment of regular infantry, officiating as chief engineer, 
superintended the firing of the cannon. The militia, orderly on 
march and in encampment, were as brave as the bravest in this 
battle. 

In a few days, Jackson marched his victorious troops to the 
Hickory grounds. The country at large acknowledged the 
bravery and good conduct of all of them, regulars, volunteers, and 
militia, Georgians and Tennesseeans engaged in the campaign 
thus terminated, though parts of the United States, perhaps the 
opposition generally, imputed ferocity and cruelty to the southern 



348 CREEK DISPERSION. [APRIL, 1S14. 

and western soldiery. But what hostilities are without ferocity ? 
or battle without cruel homicides ? Desperate fanaticism stimu- 
lated the Indians to terrible excesses, and just principles of 
retribution required retaliation. As General Pinckney's dis- 
patch stated, they neither give nor take quarter, nor make prison- 
ers. Extermination is their rule, and with tortures. The savage 
spirit is at once barbarous and heroic, detestable and admirable. 
In their only southern triumph, at Fort Mimms, not a soul was 
saved alive but the few that escaped : women, children, and all, 
were atrociously put to dreadful death. Hundreds of families, 
those ingrates, in return for kind treatment, drove from their 
homes and hunted like wild beasts, covered with mourning or 
with rags. An excited people flocked from all parts to revenge 
these monstrous wrongs, regretting that at least till another year, 
they could not punish their instigators. When it was said then 
that the south-western Americans behaved as ill as the English 
on the north-western frontier, by murdering the wounded and 
prisoners, it was forgotten that the unhappy victims at Raisin had 
surrendered and were shielded by capitulation, when sacrificed. 
Not only the rules of civilized war, but the plighted faith of 
British officers protected and should have saved, when they were 
permitted to be massacred in cold blood. The battle of Emuch- 
fau was no doubt terrible vengeance for the massacre at Fort 
Mimms, and many other cruelties which it was necessary to 
retaliate. The only part of the execution obnoxious to censure, 
however, was killing the sixteen Indians found concealed the day 
after the fort was stormed, who, if they could have been safely 
secured, might, as prisoners, have added more lustre to our arms 
than as slain. 

Immediately after the storming of Emuchfau, the great body 
of the hostile Creeks, not garrisoned there, dispersed and fled 
precipitately towards the Spanish forts of St. Marks and Pensa- 
cola. Many were killed in their flight by Colonel Russell's de- 
tachment, among them the prophet Francis. At the Hickory 
grounds, they fled from Jackson's approach and sent proposals 
of peace on unconditional terms, on the 18th April, being then 
driven to great distress. McQueen, with still 500 adherents, fell 
back on the Escambia river, near Pensacola. A number of 
towns surrendered unconditionally. The chief of Cowetan, 



CHAP. X.] WEATHERSFORD. 349 

with Marshall, a half-breed, repaired to Washington early in 
May, to consult the president as to the disposition of the Creek 
lands, forfeited by their misconduct. The most striking, how- 
ever, and characteristic circumstance of the submission of these 
unhappy savages was Weathersford's immolation of himself for 
the rest of his countrymen. He led the attack at Fort Minims, 
and was one of the chief perpetrators in its atrocities. After the 
storming of Emuchfau, General Jackson required that he should 
be surrendered for execution, as is always customary, in fact the 
rule, when Indian murders are committed. The Creek war 
began by our agent insisting on the surrender of some of the 
first to commit outrages on our people. The question whether 
they should be given up, was the issue of war or peace between 
the patriot and peace parties. The vanquished but fearless chief- 
tain, Weathersford, still reeking with the bjood of the Minims 
massacre, disdaining to be taken captive for surrender to the con- 
querors of his country, and escaping all General Jackson's efforts 
to take him, nobly resolved on a much bolder alternative, which 
proved, as such resorts often do, the means of his security and 
honour. Contriving to elude all Jackson's sentinels and guards, 
he made good his entrance unperceived to the general's presence; 
amazed at such a guest, but always collected and, as with savages 
is especially necessary, betraying no movement of surprise. " Ge- 
neral," said the brave barbarian, " I have fought you with all 
my might, and done all the harm I could. But you have con- 
quered. I am in your power, to do with as you will. I have 
only to lament the misfortunes of my people. For myself I am 
prepared for any fate. Behold me in your presence, but not at 
your feet ; your captive, but no supplicant." Jackson was too 
generous, too wise, too politic, to take the life of such a prisoner, 
or do him any harm. He treated him with respect, won him by 
kindness, and made good use of him in engaging others of his 
nation to throw themselves on the victor's mercy. 

As Marius overthrew his swarthy foes in Numidia in frequent 
battles, and with prodigious disparity of internecion, Jackson 
exterminated the Creeks, capturing their chief, as Jugurtha was 
at last made prisoner. The names of the Numidian battle- 
grounds are wild and barbarous, like those in Alabama. And 
when Weathersford abruptly appeared in Jackson's tent at mid- 
night, the general, undisturbed by so alarming a visitor, calm, 
vol. 1.— 30 



350 INDIAN SUBMISSION. [1814. 

collected, commanding, reminds us of Marius and the assassin 
sent to put him to death, awed by his stern countenance and lofty 
inquiry whether he dared kill Caius Marius, retiring, unable to 
execute his office. 

Early in May the Tennessee troops returned home, after com- 
pleting their triumphant campaign, proud of their exploits. The 
North and South Carolina militia, together with some of the 
regulars, remained to garrison the Creek country, termed the 
Nation, at the fork of Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, where once 
stood one of the few antiquities of that uncultivated region, an old 
French fort called Toulouse. In place of it General Pinckney 
who, by this time, joined General Jackson, caused a new fort 
to be built there and called it after the brave Tennessee com- 
mander, Jackson. About the same time that these arrangements 
were making at that American Toulouse, the last of the French 
armies driven out of Spain, was bravely, under Marshal Soult, 
but in vain, fighting the battle of Toulouse, in the south of 
France, where the Duke of Wellington effected his triumphant 
entry into that country, and overthrew the greatest of modern 
commanders. On the 18th April, 1814, Jackson wrote to Go- 
vernor Blount, from the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa : 
The campaign is drawing to a prosperous close. We have scoured 
the Coosa and Tallapoosa and intervening country. Part of the 
enemy escaped over the latter and fled in consternation to Pen- 
sacola. But many of the former have come in, and others are 
hourly coming to surrender. We will overtake the fugitives and 
make them feel that there is no more safety in flight than resist- 
ance. They must supplicate for peace if they wish to enjoy it. 
Many negroes taken at Fort Mimms, and one white woman are 
delivered up, with her two children. The Tallapoosa king is 
here confined. The Tostahatchee king of the Hickory ground, 
has delivered himself up. Weathersford has been with me, but 
I did not confine him. McQueen was taken but escaped. Hil- 
linghagee, their great prophet, has absconded, but we will catch 
him. Such is the situation of the savage instigators of the war. 

Part of the regular troops under Colonel Russell, being sta- 
tioned at Fort Jackson, (the first time of -many hundreds that 
name began to be gratefully conferred on places and persons,) 
the rest were marched to the seaboard, and some of them fixed 
at Mobile, where General Jackson's head-quarters were after- 



CHAP. X.] INDIAN MISERY. 351 

wards established. The Carolina militia, garrisoned the interme- 
diate places till their term of service expired. General Pinckney 
and Colonel Hawkins arrived about the 20th of April, 1814, at 
Fort Jackson. The once happy and haughty Creek nation pre- 
sented a melancholy and distressing spectacle. Their sufferings 
are indescribable, most of them never witnessed by any but them- 
selves, draining the dregs of humiliation, many reduced by fa- 
mine to mere skeletons ; others, through hunger and fear, became 
lunatics. The face of the country and the people was changed 
from plenty and peace, to poverty, starvation, wretchedness and 
ruin. The humanity of American government was conspicuous 
on this sad occasion for it. Every effort was made to mitigate 
the sufferings of the dejected savages. To such a pitch was 
their madness of fanaticism carried, that they had thrown away 
their hoes and other agricultural implements — taught to regard 
civilization as their greatest calamity, every trace of it was de- 
stroyed. The humane and intelligent of England could not have 
been aware of the distress of these abused savages. 

The splendid vernal daylight of Alabama, clearer than even 
Italian sunshine, was contrasted at the period of these events by 
accounts of one of those dismal days in London, which so strongly 
contrast with American atmosphere. A fog so dense and op- 
pressive shrouded that great metropolis, that very few persons 
ventured out, except on pressing business ; and no sound was 
heard out of doors but the voice of the watchman, or the noise of 
some solitary carriage, cautiously feeling its way through the 
gloom. It extended as far as the Downs, a distance of 70 miles, 
and far in other directions. The wind in the interval blew uni- 
formly from the north-east. There had been nothing like this 
fog since the great earthquake at Lisbon, half a century before. 
The fog then lasted eight days. To a person who went up to 
London from a clear open country, during two or three days, it 
seemed as if descending into a coal-pit, to see persons walking 
with a little torch or a candle at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, trying 
to find out in their own street, their own habitation, and some of 
them so bewildered as to knock at their neighbours' doors, to ask 
where their own houses were. Some of the public stages and 
coaches were obliged to be left in the road, and their horses taken 
out — many were overturned and several people injured. Several 
persons having missed their way, fell into the rivers and canals, 



352 ATTEMPT ON THE SLAVES. [1813. 

and were drowned. The mail coaches which reached London 
were many hours belated, the passengers obliged to get out, and 
the drivers to lead their horses. 

Soon after the first successes of Generals Floyd, White and 
Jackson, there were appearances of a favourable change in the 
conduct of the Spanish authorities of Florida. In February Col- 
onel Hawkins had advices from a runner sent to the Seminoles 
that the Governor of Pensacola, in a talk with the chiefs of 
their villages, had said to them, that being an uninformed people, 
they ought to be advised by their elders, and help them to put 
down the prophets, who were injuring them by falsehoods. They 
had deceived, divided and ruined the nation. It had misapplied 
the powder he gave them to hunt provisions with. If the English 
came, they would be driven away by the Americans. They had 
deceived the Indians before, and would again. The deception 
practised on him, this Spanish governor said, was through the 
fears of his under officers, who urged him to alliance with the 
prophet's party, and to supply them with ammunition. 

Perhaps the Spaniards were never more than passive instru- 
ments of England in these hostilities. But toward the conclusion 
of the Creek campaign, the British fleets and forces began to 
threaten that formidable descent which was effected in the au- 
tumn. Though their reliance on the savages had failed them 
that on the slaves remained in full belief of its realization. Gene- 
ral Pinckney was kept throughout the summer of 1813, continu- 
ally alarmed by English designs on the slave population. Pro- 
clamations were sent ashore by Admiral Cochrane, obviously 
addressed to the blacks ; stating that all persons desirous of re- 
moving from the United States to Europe, or the British West 
Indies, upon letting it be known when and where they would 
embark, would find English vessels ready to receive them, with 
option whether to enter the army or navy, or settle wherever 
they chose in his Britannic majesty's dominions. On this un- 
usual and ungenerous, if not unwarrantable method of waging 
war, to which theEnglish government had recourse, signally de- 
feated, disgraced and punished as it was, during the next year of 
the war, it is premature to enter in recounting the occurrences of 
the year 1813. The narrative, however, would be imperfect if it 
did not mention its first appearance. The naval commander-in- 
chief, Admiral Cochrane, gave formal notice to our government 



CHAP. X.] CREEK SUBJUGATION. 353 

that it was the prince regent's determination and orders to all 
his subjects to carry on a war, more barbarous, bloody and de- 
structive, than war's civilized and recognized usages allow. 

Soon after General Jackson's last before-mentioned letter, he 
left the Alabama army under command of General Pinckney, 
who joined him at the place to be called Fort Jackson. The 
Tennessee militia officer had now begun his race of renown. 
His return home was a triumphant progress. — The resignation 
of General Harrison enabled the president to nominate Jackson 
a brigadier-general and major-general by brevet in the regular 
army. While hesitating whether to accept that grade, having 
long been a major-general of militia and proved his capacity for 
command, the resignation of Major-General Hampton afforded 
an opportunity to gratify his aspiration: and Andrew Jackson, 
who had been postponed in order to appoint General Winchester 
to a brigade, became a divisionary commander, and the junior 
major-general in the regular army. 

As the tawny, if not negro kings of Africa and parts of Asia, 
repaired to Rome to acknowledge fealty for the crowns they held 
by republican sufferance, the Creek chieftains by that campaign 
were constrained to visit Washington to make terms of pacifica- 
tion ; and for territories more extensive, and far more productive 
than the dominions of several German sovereignties, which now 
give princes to Great Britain, Belgium and Portugal. At an 
ancient French fortress, raised in the American desert before an 
Englishman had put his foot in Alabama, where the Coosa and 
Tallapoosa united their clear streams and harmonious Indian 
names, the king of the Hickory grounds, Tostahatch.ee, was a 
prisoner ; with a prophet, Hilligahee, and a celebrated chieftain 
Weathersford. These noble, though ferocious barbarians had 
not fled their country when in danger, as the oldest and most 
accomplished nobility of Europe did its finest kingdom, nor sub- 
mitted till nearly exterminated, but bravely fought till the last, 
and even when conquered, continued still unterrified and dignified 
in their overthrow. If they could write their history, every 
page might sparkle with the exploits of heroism. Instead of 
which it is the task of others to record their mournful downfall 
and to gather it from their treaties with the United States. The 
significant catalogue of treaties with the Creek nation, part of 
the American code of laws, as ratified by the Senate of the United 

30* 



354 CREEK TREATIES. [NOV., 1813. 

States, thus records their decline : first, a treaty of peace and 
friendship with Washington, negotiated by General Henry Knox, 
Secretary of War, in 1790 ; next a treaty of peace and friendship 
negotiated by Benjamin Hawkins, George Clymer and Andrew 
Pickens, in 1792; then a treaty of limits negotiated by James 
Wilkinson, Benjamin Hawkins and Andrew Pickens in 1803 ; 
another such treaty arranged with General Dearborn, Secretary 
of War, in 1805; at last an agreement and capitulation negotiated 
with them by General Andrew Jackson in 1814. These treaties, 
formally submitted by presidents to the Senate of the United 
States, mark the decline of an established and proud people, 
more ancient than their conquerors, falling gradually from stipu- 
lations of national friendship at first to those of limits, and finally 
of capitulation. The last treaty with Jackson surrendered to victors 
much of their country and all their independence. Whereas, is 
the tenour of it, an unprovoked, inhuman and sanguinary war, 
waged by the hostile Creeks against the United States, hath been 
repelled, prosecuted and determined successfully on the part of 
the states, in conformity with principles of national justice and 
honourable warfare : and whereas, consideration is due to the 
rectitude of proceeding dictated by instructions relating to the 
re-establishment of peace : be it remembered, that prior to the 
conquest of that part of the Creek nation hostile to the United 
States, numberless aggressions had been committed against the 
peace, the property and the lives of citizens of the United States 
and those of the Creek nation in amity with her, at the mouth of 
Duck river, Fort Mimms and elsewhere, contrary to national 
faith and the regard due to an article of the treaty concluded at 
New York, in the year 1790, between the two nations; that the 
United States, previous to the perpetration of such outrages, did, 
in order to insure future amity and concord between the Creek 
nation and the said states, in conformity with the stipulations of 
former treaties, fulfil with punctuality and good faith, her engage- 
ments to the said nation : that more than two-thirds of the 
whole number of chiefs and warriors of the Creek nation, disre- 
garding the genuine spirit of existing treaties, suffered themselves 
to be instigated to violations of their national honour, and the 
respect due to a part of their own nation faithful to the United 
States and the principles of humanity, by impostors denominating 
themselves prophets, and by the duplicity and misrepresentation 



CHAP. X.] CREEK TREATY. 355 

of foreign emissaries, whose governments are at war, open or 
understood, with the United States. Wherefore, 1st, the United 
States demand an equivalent for all the expenses incurred in 
prosecuting the war to its termination, by accession of all the 
territory belonging to the Creek nation, within the territories of 
the United States lying, &c: provided, nevertheless, that where 
any possession of any chief or warrior of the Creek nation, who 
shall have been friendly to the United States during the war, and 
taken an active part therein, shall be within the territory ceded 
by these articles to the United States, every such person shall be 
entitled to a reservation of land within the said territory of one 
mile square, to include his improvements as near the centre 
thereof as may be, which shall inure to the said chief or warrior 
and his descendants, so long as he or they shall continue to 
occupy the same, who shall be protected by and subject to the 
laws of the United States ; but upon the voluntary abandonment 
thereof, by such possessor or his descendants, the right of occu- 
pancy or possession of said lands shall devolve to the United 
States, and be identified with the right of property ceded thereby. 

The United States demand that the Creek nation abandon all 
communication, and cease to hold any intercourse with any 
British or Spanish post, garrison or town ; and that they shall not 
admit among them any agent or trader, who shall not derive 
authority to hold commercial or other intercourse with them, by 
license from the president or authorized agent of the United 
States. 

The United States demand the capture and surrender of all the 
prophets and instigators of the war, whether foreigners or natives, 
who have not submitted to the arms of the United States, and 
become parties to these articles of capitulation, if ever they shall 
be found within the territory guaranteed to the Creek nation by 
the second article. 

The Creek nation being reduced to extreme want, and not at 
present having the means of subsistence, the United States, 
from motives of humanity, will continue to furnish gratuitously 
the necessaries of life until the crops of corn can be considered 
competent to yield the nation a supply, and will establish trading 
houses in the nation at the discretion of the President of the 
United States, and at such places as he shall direct, to enable the 
nation, by industry and economy, to procure clothing. 



356 SPANISH TREATY. [OCT., 1813. 

Thirty-six Indian chiefs signed at Fort Jackson this mortifying 
capitulation with Major-General Andrew Jackson, Adjutant-Ge- 
neral Robert Butler, Benjamin Hawkins, United States agent for 
Indian affairs, and Return J. Meigs, agent for the Creek nation ; 
by English instigation to ferocious hostilities, compelled to yield 
the independence, and nearly the existence, of a noble nation de- 
serving better fate ; which the government of the United States, 
by every consideration of policy and principle of honour, was 
bound to preserve from degradation. The fate of the Creeks is 
one of the most memorable lessons of the war of 1812. 

Generals Pinckney and Jackson, who closed the Creek war, 
both natives of South Carolina, brought together at Toulouse in 
Alabama, after having met as members of Congress when the 
seat of government was at Philadelphia, were eminent Ameri- 
cans, the one then terminating, the other beginning, distinguished 
public service. Pinckney negotiated at Madrid the treaty with 
Spain in 1795 : Jackson that with the Creek nation in 1814. In 
that interval of less than twenty years the vast Spanish empire 
was commencing a declension which, in 1795, who could have 
foreseen ? The treaty then signed by Pinckney and the Prince 
of Peace designated the southern boundary of the United States 
from the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida, and the 
middle of the channel of the river Mississippi as their western boun- 
dary. It stipulated that the high contracting parties shall, by all 
means in their power, maintain peace and harmony among the 
several Indian nations who inhabit the country, adjacent to the 
lines and rivers which form the boundaries of the two Floridas ; 
and restrain by force all hostilities on the part of the Indian nations 
living within their boundary ; so that Spain will not suffer her 
Indians to attack the citizens of the United States, nor the Indians 
inhabiting their territory ; that no treaty but of peace shall be 
made by either party, with Indians living within the boundary of 
the other, but endeavour to make the advantages of the Indian 
trade mutually common, and beneficial to each nation. No one 
therefore knew better than General Pinckney how that treaty was 
infringed by Spanish agents under English influence. That leading 
treaty in American diplomacy, foreign intercourse and maritime 
principles, stipulates, moreover, those generous rules of interna- 
tional government, which the United States have always main- 
tained, together with nearly all other seafaring nations, except 



CHAP. X.] GENERAL PINCKNEY. 357 

Great Britain, by whom they have been constantly rejected. — 
Privilege of undisturbed departure without molestation after war, 
a principle proclaimed by English Magna Charta, restoration of 
property taken from pirates, security for property wrecked, free 
ships, free goods, free colonial trade between ports of enemies, 
legitimate specification of contraband articles and restriction of 
blockade to actual investment, no search or visitation of vessels 
but by boats, with only two or three men without force, were 
established by that treaty to be perpetual law between Spain and 
the United States. 

Pinckney, born one of the gentry of South Carolina, educated 
in Europe, as most of them were before the means of education 
became common in this country ; brought up to refinement and 
luxury ; with numerous, opulent and elevated connections, was 
held in high social as well as political esteem. Jackson was 
alone in the world, without a relative or fortune, but of his own 
acquisition, or education beyond its mere rudiments. The ac- 
complishments and elegancies of refined youth to which Pinckney 
was born and bred, were unknown to Jackson. After serving 
as a captain in the army of the Revolution, Major Pinckney (as 
by that service he was entitled to be called), became one of the 
most respectable citizens of Carolina. Washington selected him 
to succeed John Adams as American Minister at the court of 
London, where Major Pinckney was Minister Plenipotentiary 
in 1794, when Jay negotiated the treaty commonly known as 
Jay's treaty, one of the first and angriest of the controversial 
topics dividing American parties. After spending several years 
as American minister in England, (when the American represent- 
ative there was not so well considered as he has been since the 
war of 1812, placed this country on a footing of national equality, 
enhancing social as well as political acceptance,) Major Pinckney 
was succeeded there by Rufus King. Returning home, he was 
elected a member of Congress, in which body he was much re- 
spected for solidity of judgment, dignity of character, consistency 
and candour of politics, as a distinguished member of the ori- 
ginal federal party in its first era. Major Pinckney, General 
Jackson and Mr. Madison were all members of Congress toge 
ther. Major Pinckney's elder brother, Charles Cotesworth Pinck- 
ney, was one of the special envoys from the United States to 
France, afterwards candidate of the federal partyfor the presidency 



358 PINCKNEY AND JACKSON. [DEC, 1813. 

when Jefferson was elected. Major Thomas Pinckney was 
chosen Governor of South Carolina ; in which office his just pride 
was, with the firmness for which he was remarkable, that he 
never exercised the much-abused power to pardon ; believing that 
the law, to be respected, must be enforced. Authorized by act of 
Congress, preparatory to war, to appoint six major-generals, Pre- 
sident Madison, with his uniform regard to wise conciliation, se- 
lected Major Pinckney as one of them from the party opposed to his 
administration, and to the war. His honourable course was draw- 
ing to a close, as Jackson's great career was beginning when they 
met in the wilds of Alabama, at an old French fort, to dictate terms 
to a conquered people. Less demonstrative, communicative, fierce 
or commanding than General Jackson, General Pinckney was a 
man of tried courage and firmness, slight of person, mild, taciturn, 
reserved, but inflexible and high-minded. From the palaces of 
Madrid, and the pleasures of London, to the wilderness of Ala- 
bama, and the privations of Fort Jackson, what a change for the 
one ! Emerging from frontier life to rise to the summit of Ameri- 
can elevation, what a career for the other who was long after, 
even by admirers of his great abilities, called a Tennessee bar- 
barian ! 

In the course of human events, the vast Spanish empire, like 
the Nation, as the Creeks were called, was crumbling to decay. 
Its American possessions, whose anarchical independence no hu- 
man foresight could conceive in 1795, when Pinckney dwelt in 
the proud metropolis of Spain, were already in 1813 shaking off 
those colonial yokes which General Jackson, as Chief Magistrate 
of the United States, was to break to pieces. A batttle was to 
be won by his Tennessee pupil at San Jacinto, wresting from 
Spanish colonists a part of what they considered part of their 
Mexican republic. A Mexican republic was to be acknowledged 
by Spain, and one of its provinces acknowledged as another re- 
public by the United States and Great Britain. Pinckney, in the 
Moorish splendours of Madrid, treating with the superb minion 
of royal imbecility, styled the Prince of Peace, established bounds 
of empires which Jackson obliterated. In 1795 the titles of that 
upstartprince bespoke more wealth, dominion and power than were 
contained in 1813 in all Alabama and Mississippi, if not Tennes- 
see : the most excellent Lord Don Manuel de Godoy, and Albarez 
de Faria, Rios, Ianchez de Zarzosa ; Prince de la Paz, Duke de 



CHAP. X.] PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. 359 

Alcudia ; lord of the Soto de Roma, and of the state of Albala ; 
grandee of Spain of the first class ; perpetual regidor of the city 
of Santiago ; knight of the illustrious order of the Golden Fleece, 
and great cross of the royal and distinguished Spanish order of 
Charles the 3d ; commander of Valencia del Ventoso Riviera, and 
Aunchal in that of Santiago; knight and great cross of the religious 
order of St. John ; counsellor of state ; first secretary of state and 
despatcho; secretary to the queen ; superintendent-general of the 
ports and highways ; protector of the royal academy of the noble 
arts, and of the royal societies of natural history, botany, chemistry 
and astronomy ; gentleman of the king's chamber in employment ; 
captain-general of his armies ; inspector and major of the royal 
corps of body guards, &c. &c. &c. Appointing Thomas Pinck- 
ney to negotiate with the gorgeous minister of Spain, Washing- 
ton, the president of the then only republic, could confer on him 
no title but that of citizen of the United States. Already that 
citizenship is a protection from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande 
del Norte, and Spain looks to this country to preserve Cuba, the 
last colony of Spain, from Great Britain. Such changes of empire 
has this century evolved ; many of them ascribable, in great part, 
to the militia-general whose career began in the Creek war of 1813. 

In his annual message to Congress the 7th of December, 1S13, 
when the south-western campaign was yet far from completion, 
indeed when the militia and volunteer troops were beginning to 
fail, and there was too much reason to apprehend that the issue 
would not be as triumphant as it proved before that session of 
Congress closed, the president's digest of that memorable cam- 
paign was that the cruelty of the enemy in enlisting the savages 
into a war with a nation desirous of mutual emulation in miti- 
gating its calamities, has not been confined to any one quarter. 
Wherever they could be turned against us, no exertions to 
effect it had been spared. On our south-western border the 
Creek tribes, who, yielding to our persevering endeavours, were 
gradually acquiring more civilized habits, became the unfor- 
tunate victims of seduction. A war in that quarter has been the 
consequence, infuriated by a bloody fanaticism, recently pro- 
pagated among them. 

It was necessary to crush such a war before it could spread 
among the contiguous tribes, and before it could favour enter- 
prizes of the enemy into that vicinity. With this view a force 



360 PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. [DEC, 1813. 

was called into the service of the United States, from the states 
of Georgia and Tennessee, which, with the nearest regular 
troops, and other corps from the Mississippi territory, might not 
only chastise the savages into present peace, but make a lasting 
impression on their fears. 

The progress of the expedition, as far as is yet known, corre- 
sponds with the martial zeal with which it was espoused ; and the 
best hopes of a satisfactory issue are authorized by the complete 
success with which a well-planned enterprise was executed 
against a body of hostile savages by a detachment of volunteer 
militia of Tennessee, under the gallant command of General 
Coffee ; and by a still more important victory over a larger part 
of them, gained under the immediate command of Major- 
General Jackson, an officer equally distinguished for his patriot- 
ism and his military talents. 

The systematic perseverance of the enemy, in courting the aid 
of the savages in all quarters, had the natural effect of kindling 
their ordinary propensity for war into a passion, which even 
among those best disposed towards the United States, was ready, 
if not employed on our side, to be turned against us. A de- 
parture from our protracted forbearance to accept the services 
tendered by them, has thus been forced upon us. But, in yield- 
ing to it, the retaliation has been mitigated as much as possible, 
both in its extent and in its character, stopping far short of the 
example of the enemy, who owe the advantages they have occa- 
sionally gained in battle, chiefly to the number of their savage 
associates ; and who have not controlled them either from their 
usual practice of indiscriminate massacre on defenceless inhabi- 
tants, or from scenes of carnage without a parallel, on prisoners 
to the British arms, guarded by all the laws of humanity and 
of honourable war. 

For these enormities the enemy are equally responsible, whe- 
ther with the power to prevent them, they want the will, or 
with the knowledge of a want of power they still avail them- 
selves of such instruments. 



CHAP. XL] AMERICAN NAVY. 361 



CHAPTER XI. 
NAVAL WARFARE. 

COMMERCIAL AND BELLIGERENT FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN NAVY. 
—NELSON'S VIEW OF IT.— SEIZURE OF FRIGATE CHESAPEAKE.— 
IMPRESSMENT AND COMMERCIAL WRONGS.— DISCIPLINE AND CON- 
FIDENCE OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.— WANT OF DISCIPLINE AND 
OVER-CONFIDENCE OF BRITISH.— AMERICAN SUPERIORITY.— ENGLISH 
NAVY UNEQUAL IN FORCE TO AMERICAN, IN AMERICA IN 1812. — 
ENGLISH SHIPS ENUMERATED— AND AMERICAN.— CULPABLE NEGLI- 
GENCE AND TIMIDITY OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.— DETERMINED 
TO LAY UP NAVY AS PORT DEFENCES WHEN IT MIGHT HAVE SUB- 
DUED THAT OF ENGLAND.— ENGLISH VIEWS OF THAT SUBJECT.— 
MR. GALLATIN'S SCHEME.— VISIT OF CAPTAINS BAINBRIDGE AND 
STEWART TO WASHINGTON.— THEIR REMONSTRANCE AGAINST DIS- 
MANTLING THE NAVY.— MADISON YIELDS TO IT.— FRIGATE CONSTI- 
TUTION'S FIRST CRUISE AND CAPTURE OF THE GUERRIERE CON- 
TRARY TO ORDERS.— CHASE OF THE CONSTITUTION BY ENGLISH 
SQUADRON.— CHASE OF THE BELVIDERA BY AMERICAN SQUADRON.— 
SEABOARD SENTIMENT CONCERNING NAVY.— DREAD OF ENGLAND.— 
CAPTURE OF THE GUERRIERE.— ENGLISH VIEWS OF IT.— CAPTURE 
OF THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE AND DETROIT ON LAKE ERIE.— FROLIC 
BY WASP.— MACEDONIAN BY UNITED STATES.— JAVA BY CONSTITU- 
TION.— PEACOCK BY HORNET. — BAINBRIDGE. — DECATUR.— HULL.— 
CAPTURE OF CHESAPEAKE BY SHANNON.— LAWRENCE.— HIS CHAL- 
LENGE OF LA BONNE CITOYENNE.— LIEUTENANT COX.— HIS COURT 
MARTIAL.— SALUTARY NATIONAL EFFECTS OF THE LOSS OF THE 
CHESAPEAKE BY COUNTERACTION OF EASTERN DISAFFECTION.— 
SALUTARY NAVAL EFFECTS OF LAWRENCE'S INDISCRETION.— MR. 
QUINCY'S RESOLUTIONS IN THE SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.— NAVY 
ADOPTED BY THE NATION.— CRUISES OF THE FRIGATES PRESIDENT, 
CONGRESS, AND ESSEX.— NAVAL AMERICAN CAPACITY. — INEFFI- 
CIENCY OF ENGLISH MARINE.— COMPARATIVE COST OF WAR AND 
PEACE BY SEA.— LAKE WARFARE.— ON CHAMPLAIN— ON ONTARIO.— 
CHAUNCEY'S PURSUIT OF YEO.— RUNNING FIGHT.— YEO'S ESCAPE 
AND CHAUNCEY'S OMISSION TO DESTROY THE ENGLISH FLEET.— CON- 
TEST OF SHIP-BUILDING.— ENORMOUS EXPENSE OF LAKE CONFLICTS 
BY LAND AND WATER.— LORD COCHRANE'S RESOLUTIONS IN THE 
HOUSE OF COMMONS.— COMPARISON OF AMERICAN AND ENGLISH 
MARINE.— CAPTURES OF THE TWO FROM EACH OTHER IN 1812 AND 
1813.— SUPERIORITY OF THE AMERICAN— CAUSES OF IT.— WAR OF 
1812 MADE AMERICAN NAVY FROM LONG-PREPARED MATERIALS.— 
ITS CHARACTER— AND REWARDS. 

The foundations of naval power are extensive commerce, 
VOL. i. — 31 



362 AMERICAN NAVY. [1812. 

numerous shipping and seamen, enterprizing merchants and 
adventurous mariners; in all of which the United States abound. 
Their first establishments were along the Atlantic from the Bay 
of Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico: their present extension is there 
and upon the inland seas of the west, where not less than fifteen 
thousand mariners are already employed. Commerce has always 
been a principal, for many years their main, reliance. From 
their colonial condition they have always been the most expert 
navigators. Their first hostilities, as an independent nation, were 
by sea, with the French in 1797, '98, and '99, to vindicate foreign 
commerce from wrongs. Their next were with the corsair 
powers of Northern Africa, for like vindication ; whose depreda- 
tions throughout the Mediterranean had long been tolerated by 
the great naval kingdoms of Europe — even England following 
the United States in that emancipation. With increasing com- 
merce has grown an American spirit to free the ocean from all 
unjust restraints. As in 1801 they were the only people to resist 
the Algerines, Tunisians, and Tripolitans, so in 1842 they alone 
disputed, at least by remonstrance and negotiation, which might 
lead to force, the inveterate pretensions of Denmark to exclude 
from the Baltic all navigation not paying imposition as sound 
dues during a long tract of time exacted, like toll for leave to pass 
the gates of that entrance to Russia, to Sweden, and to Denmark. 
Though no parly by contract to the armed neutrality of 1800, 
the United States were in principle and sympathy a member of 
that coalition, as to that of 1780 they were more formally. Not 
long after the most renowned of Great Britain's admirals, Nelson, 
by the famous battle of the Nile, broke down the naval exist- 
ence of France, expelled, like that of Holland, and of Spain, 
from the ocean by British ascendency, on the 1st July, 1801, an 
American squadron, under Commodore Richard Dale, with Cap- 
tains Samuel and James Barron, William Bainbridge, and An- 
drew Sterrett,in the flag ship President, and her consorts, anchored 
at Gibraltar. Washington's administration laid the keels of an 
American navy. Adams' administration put their prows upon 
the seas, with perhaps precipitate development. Jefferson, ac- 
cused of aversion to the navy, was no sooner installed as presi- 
dent than he recommended to Congress the enactment of his 
resolution, formed many years before, when American minister 
in France, to add independence by force from barbarian com- 
mercial oppression to that declared and achieved from British 



CHAP. XI.] AMERICAN NAVY. 363 

by the seven years war of the Revolution. Commodore Dale 
derived his naval character from service by sea in that war, on 
board Paul Jones' ship, the Bon Homme Richard, in combat 
with a British frigate, displaying the courage, the skill, the 
resource, the endurance, which, with more than English free- 
dom, united to perfect discipline, constitute the perfection of 
naval superiority. The most renowned of Great Britain's famous 
admirals, Nelson, remarking the seamanship of Dale's squadron, 
which he attentively surveyed through his glass, observed to an 
American gentleman on board of his ship at the time, that there 
was in those transatlantic ships a nucleus of trouble for the 
maritime power of Great Britain. We have nothing to fear, said 
Admiral Nelson, from any thing on this side of the Atlantic; but 
the manner in which those ships are handled makes me think that 
there may be a time when we shall have trouble from the other. 
The poorly equipped and provided American vessels of the war 
of the Revolution, contending against the overwhelming odds of 
British might by sea, long before indicated what Nelson disco- 
vered. 

A spread of commerce in 1812, rapidly overtaking the tonnage 
of England, and ever since constantly increasing so as to be now 
the second, with a certainty of becoming the first in the world, 
opens wide those streams of belligerent naval faculty, which 
flow from the inexhaustible fountains of commercial. The 
United States of America furnish some of the best seamen and 
petty officers in both the commercial and naval marine of Great 
Britain : men more intelligent, more active, more sober, and 
more tractable than English sailors. Notwithstanding the 
great superiority in number and size of vessels which Great 
Britain has over the United States, if all the American mariners 
afloat could be gathered into the American navy, such as it is, or 
such as it might be made after a single year's material organiza- 
tion, it may be doubted whether a contest between the Ameri- 
can marine, national and private armed on the one side, and the 
British navy on the other, would be altogether desperate. There 
are, moreover, naval alliances which might reinforce America, 
thus raised so near to physical equality with England as to 
leave only the trial of seamanship, discipline, gunnery and navi- 
gation, in which in 1812 American ships of war unquestionably 
surpassed English. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, France, 
Italy, all Europe, that ever had ships, commerce, or colonies, have 



364 AMERICAN NAVY. [1812. 

large arrearages of maritime wrongs to settle with Great Britain, 
on whose co-operation the United States may reckon, and who, 
since the war of 1812, regard the American navy as that destined 
to break the fetters of the sea. Its trials and experience from its 
creation, in the French hostilities of 1797, '98, and '99, with the 
African barbarians in 1801, '02, '03, '04, and '05, from the time 
of Nelson's prediction to its fulfilment by the war of 1812, were 
the best apprenticeship. The seizure of the frigate Chesapeake 
in our own waters in 1807, the brutal outrages inflicted by im- 
pressment on American sailors everywhere, the paper blockades, 
admiralty perversions of the law of nations, orders in council, 
contumelious vexations of our commerce, the whole course of 
English insolence, arrogance, oppression, and flagrant injustice, 
disarmed their navy by false confidence, while it armed ours by 
a strong spirit of vindication. 

This spirit, though restrained by the extreme forbearance of 
Jefferson's policy, was roused by the continual war cries of the 
merchants, till the nation was at last forced into war just when, 
however unprepared government. Congress and the executive 
were, the sentiment of the people of all parties was nearly 
unanimous that war was indispensable and just, of the war 
party that it should be risked at all events, without further pre- 
paration, and the conviction of the navy, both men and officers, 
that they could beat the English in equal combat. The seamen 
were admirably schooled and disciplined. The officers were 
confident of their crews, their ships and themselves, all eager for 
trial, and upon rational calculations. The English were spoiled 
by success everywhere over every antagonist ; profoundly con- 
temptuous, both nation and navy, of the truckling, gain-loving 
submission, the insignificant marine, the time-serving govern- 
ment, the party-struck and divided people of the United States. 
English ships of war were not well manned, in either the com- 
plement or composition of their crews ; their discipline was 
loose ; their gunnery negligent and never good, so inferior to 
ours that in any contest with equal force, American success was 
well nigh certain. So our officers thought, and they were 
right in thinking so. They knew their own strength and their 
enemy's weakness. Although the crew of the Constitution, 
when by the easy capture of the Guerriere she signalized the 
first demonstration of this state of things, was not a good crew, 
as well prepared as Captain Hull desired, yet their practice 



CHAP. XL] AMERICAN NAVY. 365 

had been so much more constant and instructive than that of 
Captain Dacre's ship, vapouring and vaunting along our coasts, 
that both Americans and English were equally surprised, not 
so much at the victory as at the rapidity of execution, the ease 
and the striking disparity of destruction with which it was ac- 
complished. In Dacre's defence before the court-martial which 
tried and properly acquitted him, no mention whatever was 
made of the absurd pretexts afterwards assigned for American 
superiority. His masts were rotten, he pleaded, his ten im- 
pressed American sailors would not fight their countrymen, the 
Constitution was manned by British seamen, men personally 
known to that mendacious captain, who desired nothing better 
than another chance with a ship like the Guerriere of meeting 
the Constitution, whose success he attributed to the mere fortune 
of war. None of the absurd apologies were at first broached 
which were afterwards attempted ; greater size of ships, weight 
of metal, number of men. The simple fact was that the English 
were taken otf their guard by Americans upon their guard. That 
explanation is the truth as far as respects discipline, gunnery and 
a sentimental cause to nerve American combatants. It remains 
to be seen in another struggle whether superior seamanship, 
intelligence, docility, sobriety and greater liberty combined with 
kindlier obedience, are not elements of mastery to overcome better 
preparation than the English brought to the war of IS 12, when 
they were less prepared in discipline than we were in shipping. 

The number of English vessels on the American stations, the 
quality of their crews, their discipline, gunnery and condition 
in all respects, moral, political and physical, were such that if 
our naval department had been conducted with ability, the outset 
of hostilities by sea might have not merely confounded England 
and surprised America, but crippled, if not paralyzed, British 
naval supremacy, at least temporarily, in America. In the second 
chapter of this historical sketch the project of a young officer is 
submitted for conquering Canada in Nova Scotia ; striking the 
root at Halifax instead of beating the branches at York, Mon- 
treal, and Fort George. The Halifax campaign might have 
failed, as all great undertakings are liable to discomfiture. But 
its failure could not have been more signal or disgraceful than 
the attempts to invade Canada further west in 1S12 and 1813. 
Leaving that land view of this subject, we are now to see whe- 

31* 



366 ENGLISH NAVAL FORCE. [JUNE, 1812. 

ther the American navy was not strong enough in June, 1812, 
to have inflicted incalculable injury on the enemy, with corre- 
sponding advantage and honour to this country. In the chapter 
to follow this, a third view of the eastern method of beginning 
the war will be presented: that of French ships of war, either 
by themselves or in concert with America, attacking the English 
marine, military and commercial, on the American coast. At 
present we are to ascertain whether the American navy, seizing 
the moment when Great Britain, wholly unprepared for, and 
incredulous of the American declaration of war, was taken un- 
prepared for it, with small and imperfect vessels of war on the 
American station, whether the American navy was not then 
sufficient to have performed, if well directed, much more than it 
did by several however impressive isolated naval victories. At 
the time of, or before the war, the British American naval sta- 
tions were, the Halifax station, commanded by Admiral Herbert 
Sawyer, the Jamaica station, commanded by Admiral Charles 
Stirling, and the Leeward Island station, commanded by Ad- 
miral Francis Foley. Although the Halifax station might have 
been reinforced from the other stations, yet it could not have 
been before August, after news of the declaration of war, and 
would not have been, because the Halifax force was deemed 
much superior to the whole American navy. On that station 
there was no formidable ship. The Africa 64 was the largest; 
the Inflexible 64, and the Centurion 50, were the next in size; 
but the two latter were used only as receiving vessels. The 
English navy in North America consisted then of but five frigates, 
with only one 64 ship afloat, vainly confident in their ability 
to overmatch the American navy: — The Guerriere, the Shannon, 
the Spartan, and the Pomone, rated at 3S guns each, the Belvi- 
dera 36, the OZolus 32, with a considerable number of sloops 
and brigs of war. Such was the Halifax station force ; designed 
to make captures, not to fight battles, which the English did not 
anticipate. The Jamaica station had but one ship, the Poly- 
phemus 64, beyond the weight of a frigate: the Leeward Islands 
station had but one ship of the line, the Dragon 74. The line 
of battle ships of England were not considered necessary for 
America even in the event of war, which was not expected, but 
only small vessels for commercial captures, and the large ones 
were all more needed elsewhere. 



CHAP. XL] AMERICAN NAVY. 367 

The American navy then consisted of the President, the 
United States, and the Constitution, frigates of the first class ; 
the Congress, Constellation, and Chesapeake of the second : the 
Essex and Adams of the third ; the Boston and New York, 
which might easily have been got ready for sea, and a few sloops, 
brigs, and schooners of war. Eager to escape to sea, before the 
rumoured determination to lay them up in port could be effected, 
they hurried out of port as soon as war was declared, in 
detachments, almost without plan, concert or orders. The plan 
of the government, if it had any plan then, was to prevent their 
going to sea at all, where inevitable capture was supposed to 
await them. 

Such was the condition of the hostile navies when war began. 
Engrossed by her great European wars, and not expecting an 
American war, England had not a marine on our coast equal to 
our own. The first remarkable exploit of an American vessel 
at sea, was the escape of the frigate Constitution, from a British 
squadron, consisting of the Africa 64, the Shannon and Guer- 
riere, the Belvidera and another small frigate, with a sloop and 
brig of war. If the deplorable inclination of the American 
government had not been to keep our navy in port, if there 
had been any system or resolution in its administration of that 
arm, if the commanders, instead of being disconcerted by half- 
formed and miserable schemes of saving the navy by keeping it 
in port during the war — if these pusillanimous notions had been 
discarded, the officers kindly conferred with, and their opinions 
taken, a blow was then practicable, which would have far out- 
done the isolated victories, however impressive, which, at sea, 
saved the government, the Union, and the war from overthrow. 
If the President, the United States, and the Constitution, the 
Congress, the Constellation, the Chesapeake, the Essex, and the 
Adams, had, in June, 1812, immediately after the declaration of 
war, gone to sea together, and encountered the squadron which in 
July chased the solitary Constitution, unquestionably the English 
squadron of five well-sized ships, would have engaged the 
American of six or seven ; and what must have been the issue ? 
Though all the enumerated American ships were not then ready 
for sea, they might and should have been. And enough of them 
were actually at sea to encounter the British squadron under 
Commodore Broke ; the only hostile ships at that time on the 
American coast. Not one of our harbours was blockaded. Egress 



4 



368 LORD DARNLEY'S MOTION. [JUNE, 1812. 

to sea was unimpeded. A judicious use of the American navy, 
such as it was, could, not. have failed to strike a blow at that of 
Great Britain much more deadly than those actually inflicted. 
What would have been the effect of Broke's squadron, brought 
in as prizes to New York or Boston ? There was no reason why 
it should not have been done. Early demonstrations of the re- 
lative condition of the two navies, at that conjuncture, fully 
warrant the conviction that plan and confidence in our own go- 
vernment were alone wanting to a commencement of hostilities 
which would have astounded Great Britain. The defeat of the 
squadron of frigates which chased the Constitution, must have 
given the American navy command of the North American 
seas during most of the summer, the best cruising season of the 
year 1812, till England, consternated by the tidings, could send 
the larger and more numerous war-vessels which did not arrive 
with Admiral Warren till the autumn of that year. Mean- 
time it is impossible to conjecture what the effect would have 
been throughout Europe, especially on the French government 
and marine. It is no fond fancy to infer, from all the naval 
engagements between American and English ships of war, the 
perfect equipment, discipline, and spirit of ours, the imperfect 
condition and vain-glorious confidence of theirs, that by a wise, 
prudent, and bold disposition of the naval force at the command 
of our government, it was easier to gain the command of 
the coast than of the lakes. That ascendency could have been 
indeed but temporary ; but its influences would have been per- 
manent and profound. An American squadron might have 
blockaded Halifax — laid off' that port during most of the sum- 
mer, by its smaller vessels making havoc among the enemy's 
merchant ships, by its larger controlling hostilities for many 
weeks, and then could have returned into any of the many har- 
bours of New England or New York, where superior British 
force could not have molested them. 

American or individual averment, that if our government had 
made proper use of the naval means it had when war was de- 
clared, does not rest on any speculative or questionable theory. 
It is proved beyond doubt by proceedings in Parliament. On 
the 14th of May, 1813, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Darn- 
ley called attention to British naval disasters, as he termed them. 
Acknowledging that English vessels had been taken by Ameri- 
can of equal force, particularly the Peacock by the Hornet, he 



CHAP. XL] LORD DARNLEY'S MOTION. 3(59 

said that from April to July, 1812, there were on the Halifax 
station, under Admiral Sawyer, exclusive of smaller vessels, 
only one ship of the line and five frigates. He did not name 
that ship, but it must have been the Africa 64. It had been 
said, that nobleman added, that a sufficient force could not be 
spared, which he contested. It might be asserted, he said, that 
the force already on the Halifax station was equal to that of the 
American navy: but it had long been a matter of notoriety that 
the American frigates were greatly superior in size and weight 
of metal. War was declared on the 18th of June, and it was 
not till the 13th of October that letters of marque and reprisal 
were issued. In all the unfortunate battles the cause was the 
same, superior height and greater weight of the Americans, by 
which the English ships were crippled and dismasted early in 
action. Lord Darnley's motion was seconded by Earl Stan- 
hope. The Earl of Galloway attributed their naval disasters, 
in the course of some professional remarks, very much to the 
power of the Americans to man their few large frigates with 
prime sailors, whereas the great demand for men in the British 
navy had rendered it necessary to admit a large proportion of 
an inferior class. He touched also on the propensity of the 
British seamen to desert; and thought that ships should be built 
precisely of the size of the American to cope with them. Lord 
Melville, the ministerial member of the admiralty, explained 
that a general opinion prevailed that the revocation of the orders 
in council would have pacified the American government. But 
there were other branches of the service to which the attention 
of the admiralty was called, besides America; and the British 
force on some stations was no more than sufficient, the blockad- 
ing force in many places less than the force blockaded. It was 
not the opinion of any naval officers that the American ports 
could all be completely blockaded. The balance of captures was 
not, Lord Melville said, in favour of the Americans, but the re- 
verse. The reason why letters of marque were not issued before 
October, was for the purpose of knowing the reception given by 
the Americans to the English proposals of accommodation. 

Lord Darnley's motion, which was for a committee to inquire 
into the circumstances of the war with the United States, more 
particularly into the state, conduct, and management of British 
naval affairs, as connected with it, was further discussed by Lords 
Stanhope, Grey, Bathurst, Grenville, and Liverpool, and was 



370 AMERICAN NAVY. [JULY, 1812. 

refused by a majority of only 66, 125 to 59. The large minority 
showed the state of feeling upon the subject. The various apo- 
logies for English naval defeats — what were they but verifications 
of Nelson's prediction of superior American seamanship? 

It was in the outset of the war dishonourable to our executive, 
and incalculably detrimental to our cause, it is now and must ever 
be oppressive to an American to recollect, that, if, instead of paltry 
schemes of peace, after war was the law, every nerve had been 
strained to wage it vigorously, perhaps the power of Great 
Britain in America might have been paralyzed for ever. An 
American squadron blockading Halifax, peradventure captur- 
ing the five English frigates and one small 64 gun-ship con- 
stituting the whole British navy for several months there, or 
anywhere in North America, would have been an achieve- 
ment to change the face of the world. The frigate Pomone, 
which was one of Brake's squadron hunting the forlorn Con- 
stitution, had been not long before captured in the Mediter- 
ranean by the English frigate Active, after a severe and pro- 
tracted conflict, in which the English confessed that the French 
fought with great skill as well as courage, under their brave 
Captain Rosamel. What might not have been French naval 
efforts, with the large number of ships ready for sea, then 
in French, Dutch, and Italian ports, blockaded, as Lord Mel- 
ville confessed, by forces inferior to those blockaded — what 
might have been French assistance to us by sea, without alli- 
ance, if their attention had been riveted on such a naval revolu- 
tion as the capture of every English ship of war in America, and 
their flags half-masted beneath the star-spangled banner, floating 
in the bright sunshine of the port of Boston, Newport, New 
York, or Norfolk? 

British influence, then, by which nearly every nerve of Ame- 
rican independence was unstrung throughout New England, 
much of New York and elsewhere, till it touched the president 
in his cabinet, prevented his calling upon France, as he should 
have done, as the Congress of the Revolution by the missions of 
Franklin and Jefferson had done, openly and avowedly call- 
ing for French assistance. That was not done. The adminis- 
tration of Madison shrunk from it. But the inveterate itch of 
some of them for peace by other than martial means, their un- 
worthy doubt of American capacity for war, particularly with 
Great Britain, the unmanly apprehension which they shared with 



CHAP. XI.J GOVERNMENT'S ERROR. 371 

great numbers, that the navy was fit only to be made prizes, 
almost without a struggle with the lords of the ocean, unpardon- 
able ignorance of government as to the relative force of the En- 
glish and American navy at that crisis in English affairs — all these 
fears if not follies were the reasons why, without French alliance 
or assistance, the American navy was not allowed and ordered 
to perform what might have changed the current of English for- 
tune even in Europe. The mind can scarcely grasp the lost con- 
sequences of the mortal blow which might then have been struck 
by the despised American frigates, with a bit of striped bunting 
at their mast-head ? If the war of 1812 had begun by even the 
demonstration of a land expedition that summer to Halifax, and 
at the same time an American squadron before that port, it is not 
too much to say that the effect in Europe and America, would 
have been to raise the United States in two months, higher than 
their successes in three years warfare brought about. 

The art of war in its philosophy, the secret of success in every 
undertaking, is to give the whole mind and soul to its accom- 
plishment, an art in which the American government of 1812, in 
every branch, was culpably deficient. Materially prepared for 
war, it was not, and never will be. That is a defect, if it be one, 
which free institutions must have always to make head against. 
But much as it was complained of at the time, and is still recurred 
to, it was by no means the principal cause of the first year's fail- 
ures. That cause was individual, not inherent in American 
government. More than half the expenses incurred by extrava- 
gant loans, most of the life expended in disastrous battles, and 
nearly all the dishonour of the beginning were attributable, not 
to the nature of the government, but members of it, in the exe- 
cutive and legislature, clinging to hopes of peace, dreading the 
personal, political and party effects of war, to unfounded and un- 
worthy distrust of the institutions and people of the United States. 
Mr. Madison cannot be entirely exonerated, though he was the 
least to blame, and redeemed inaptitude for martial affairs, by 
great virtues for a belligerent chief-magistrate in a republic of 
written and limited authority. But other members of the exe- 
cutive, if not guilty of dereliction of duty, were extremely remiss 
in performance of it : one, in particular, who should have retired, 
(and perhaps would, but for the president's strong attachment to 
him,) in his misjudgment respecting the navy was barely pre- 



372 DISTRUST OF NAVY. [1812. 

vented committing an error which no Russian mediation could 
have atoned for. 

The American government, in all its branches, was incredibly 
ignorant of the naval capacity of the country, and grossly negli- 
gent of nearly everything that might and should have been 
known and done with that arm : ignorance and incapacity, the re- 
sult of long and ignominious peace, and of impracticable schemes 
to redress national wrongs without hostilities. In excuse for the 
government, it must be owned that the well nigh universal senti- 
ment of the mercantile and seafaring community, was disbelief 
in the ability of the navy, in fact of the country, to contend in 
arms with Great Britain, which, at sea, was considered impossible. 
Dreams of perpetual peace had produced systems of self-denial, by 
restrictive measures, more trying and more costly than war. The 
navy had been discountenanced, till at last, when war came, which 
like death, is inevitable, to such a degree of infatuation had pusil- 
lanimity of both government and the commercial portion of the 
community gone, and so omnipotent was British influence in the 
United States, that it was the fatal design of the executive to keep 
the navy in port, as harbour defences, to dismantle and degrade 
the frigates below the much abused gun boats. In the Chesa- 
peake, the Delaware, the Hudson, and wherever they were used 
during the war, they proved, that even for harbour and coast 
service, they were, at least till the discovery of steam boats, ser- 
viceable craft. Jefferson, a man of genius and of peace, was bent 
on avoiding war, at almost any cost ; and Congress is always 
much influenced by an executive more durable than Congress, 
though endowed with less legal attribute of power. Mr. Gal- 
latin openly opposed the war before it was declared, deprecated 
it afterwards, continually importuned peace by other than bellige- 
rent efforts, and persevered till peace was patched up in Europe. 
His impolitic exertions to palsy hostilities, which, waged as they 
might and would have been, if he had been secretary either of war 
or the navy, or the treasury, with his heart and mind enlisted in 
its cause, would have probably made not only much better war, 
but a better peace. If the American people and institutions had 
not proved stronger than he seemed to think them, a martial and 
high-spirited nation might have been constrained by misgovern- 
ment to submit, after inglorious failure in war, to a dishonourable 
peace, which could have been no better than a mere truce, to be 



CHAP. XL] FALSE HOPES AND FEARS. 373 

broken after further and further degradation. The United States 
must have renewed hostilities under more disadvantages than 
ever. To their great enemy are they indebted for the benefits of 
that war. But for the severity of a struggle which forced out 
the spirit and resources of the country, Russian mediations and 
peace without a single principle in controversy settled at Ghent, 
where neither the final victories nor the lofty feelings they gave rise 
to throughout the United States, were appreciated, in fact hardly 
known — such a peace would have been but a truce, a mere cessa- 
tion from hostilities. Victories by land and sea, in Canada and 
Louisiana, on the lakes, everywhere except Washington, where 
the anti-war hope still lingered and unnerved us, victories were 
the negotiators of a pacification, which has endured and improved 
ever since, for more than the succeeding third of a century. With- 
out the exertions, trials and triumphs, which that fallacious hope 
was as perseveringly, as unwisely labouring to prevent, another 
war, peradventure civil war, protracted, disorganizing, desperate, 
was the alternative, with almost inevitable dismemberment of the 
Union. Extremes of speculative policy are dangerous experi- 
ments. The love of peace which Franklin and Jefferson brought 
home from Europe, may degenerate to a prejudice, to intoxicate a 
disciple so superior as Mr. Gallatin, of whom such was Jefferson's 
high estimate, that he said he should not be measured by the stand- 
ard applied to other men. Perpetual war, passion for war was the 
English extravagance which unhinged her naval supremacy, by 
driving from the ocean all ships but those of a distant and lucre- 
loving people, not, as she thought, to be feared at sea. Extravagant 
sacrifice to peace was the American's error, as every excess is an 
error. Wanton and frequent war was a royal passion, which Ame- 
rican republican apostles wisely repudiated. When the United 
States were but breathing into national consistence in 1793, Wash- 
ington's proclamation of neutrality was an indispensable refuge. 
From 1805, when the maritime outrages of the great belligerents 
began, till the seizure of the frigate Chesapeake in our own waters, 
it was right to exhaust argument and remonstrance, before the last 
resort. But forbearance had ceased to be a virtue some time be- 
fore war was at length declared. An unwise, unworthy tame- 
ness was undermining public spirit, and some of the inveterate 
opponents of war had much national distress and dishonour to 
answer for. Mr. Gallatin's party assailants unjustly imputed 
vol. 1. — 32 



374 MR - GALLATIN. [JUNE, 1812. 

to him cunning and dissimulation. He was open and explicit 
in opposing war. If his aversion to it had yielded when the 
declaration was enacted, and he had then thought proper to 
withdraw his great talents and experience from a war adminis- 
tration, no blame could have attached to him. But he chose, no 
doubt was urged by Madison, who highly valued his patriotism 
and usefulness, to bestow them, not where most needed, in 
strengthening the financial department ; but turning his back on 
that, where he might have been of great importance, leaving it 
deserted and desolate, he went abroad upon a fruitless errand, 
which did not abridge one hour of war, nor add one valuable 
clause to a precipitated treaty of peace. In the spring of 1813, 
when Mr. Gallatin went to Europe, my official acquaintance 
began with the operations of that conjuncture. What took place 
the year before, having none but public knowledge of, I do not 
venture judgment on that gentleman's agency in imputed post- 
ponement of taxation, reliance on mere loans unsecured, or other 
deficiencies of preparation which added a year of disastrous out- 
set to hostilities before they really began in earnest in 1813. 
Madison abhorred war as much as Mr. Gallatin could, and felt 
with inborn diffidence his own want of those qualities most fit 
for it. But he yielded, wisely and conscientiously, to overruling 
circumstances, when war became the law of the United States, 
and, while always anxious for peace, from first to last waged 
war to the best of his ability with a true American spirit. 

Mr. Gallatin, long a leading member of two successful admi- 
nistrations, satisfied himself that the only safety for the navy 
would be in port, and its only utility as harbour defence, parti- 
cularly at New York, an attack on which place was appre- 
hended without any foundation for the fear. With the mer- 
chants of New York, Mr. Gallatin, as Secretary of the Treasury, 
had been much connected. Their mistaken if not foreign dis- 
quiet infected him. The frigates were to be laid up there as 
harbour guards, buried alive in a dismantlement which would 
have superadded to the preliminary reverses of the war by land, 
privation of the only relief and rescue the government and 
country experienced. When a wise and vigorous disposition 
of the naval means at the command of our government, might 
have swept the American coast from the Balize to the Bay of 
Fundy of all the British marine, military and commercial, it is 



CHAP. XL] BAINBRIDGE AND STEWART. 375 

an instructive lesson of the short-sightedness of wise men that it 
was mere remonstrance of a couple of naval officers against 
being deprived of their livelihood, which prevented the flag so 
gloriously triumphant in every sea, from being veiled before that 
of Great Britain, without an essay or effort to establish the high 
character it won for the American navy, with long and pros- 
perous tranquillity for the United States. The young states- 
men, Clay, Lowndes, Cheves, Calhoun, Peter B. Porter, Troup, 
Bibb, Grundy, and their associates, who made the war, were 
fortunately seconded by officers of the navy, who entreated to 
be permitted to carry it on, or a war for maritime redress would 
have been attempted without a naval effort, by a nation which 
had always proved that the sea is not the exclusive domain of 
Great Britain, but its uses and honours are to be shared by the 
American Republic. Hostilities by land, which, for more than 
a year and a half were continually unfortunate ; and privateers 
on the ocean, preying on British commerce, but flying from ships 
of war, would have been the only belligerent means of this coun- 
try in that contest, but for one of those insignificant occurrences 
which are often decisive of the fate and character of nations. 
Our rescue from that naval trance is imperfectly mentioned in 
Dr. Harris's Life of Bainbridge, in a published memoir of the 
life of Commodore Stewart, summarily, though accurately, in 
Goldsborough's Naval Chronicle and Cooper's Naval History ; 
but deserves fuller narrative as one of the fortunately prevented 
most deplorable and incredible mistakes of the war. 

The facts are these. As soon as war was declared Captains 
Bainbridge and Stewart went to Washington to solicit commands. 
The Secretary of the Navy, appointed, as too many of the heads 
of that most important and least difficult of all our departments 
have been, from views rather to sectional, state, party, or other 
than personal aptitude, was Paul Hamilton, of South Carolina, 
a gentleman who had been governor of that gallant common- 
wealth, and was well disposed for the credit of the navy, but 
without any knowledge of maritime affairs, and otherwise unfit 
for his station. Bainbridge and Hull first learned at Washington 
from Charles Goldsborough, chief-clerk of the navy department, to 
their infinite amazement, disappointment, and chagrin, that it had 
been resolved to keep the national ships safe in port, and not to 
expose them to unavoidable capture and probable disgrace at sea. 



376 BAINBRIDGE AND STEWART. [JUNE, 1812. 

Goldsborough showed them the order to that effect, which he 
was preparing by direction of his superior. Either by design 
or accident, nearly the whole navy was in port or near at hand 
at the moment: only the sloop Wasp, Captain Jones, abroad, on 
her return from England with some of those dispatches so much 
more anxiously looked after than any warlike preparation or 
plan. Rodgers in the frigate President, with Porter in the Essex, 
and Lawrence in the Hornet, we're lying at new York ready to 
sail. Decatur in the United States, Smith in the Congress, Sin- 
clair in the Argus, from the south, joined Rodgers's squadron in 
New York Bay, the 21st June, 1812, three days after war was 
declared. The Nautilus, Lieutenant Crane, arrived there soon 
after, but was captured as soon as she went to sea alone, destined 
for a cruise in the West Indies. Rodgers' squadron sailed the 
21st June, on a cruise to the south-east, in search of a reported 
fleet of English merchantmen. Eager as our ships of war were 
to get to sea, not only to measure strength with the English, but 
to escape the confinement in port, rumoured and apprehended 
from their own government ; sailing, therefore, almost without 
plan or definite object, it is not, perhaps, surprising that they did 
not seem to know their own power, if combined as before men- 
tioned, to overcome any hostile vessels to be encountered in the 
American seas. The frigate Constitution was alone at Annapolis, 
whence she proceeded to sea on the 12th July, 1812, on her way 
to New York. Her chase by the English squadron from which 
she miraculously escaped, putting into Boston in consequence 
of being prevented by that squadron from going to New York, 
whither she was bound, Captain Hull's sailing in her from Bos- 
ton before orders reached him to leave her and take command of 
another frigate, his capture of the Guerriere, in spite of all the 
Navy Department could do to prevent that victory, are the dra- 
matic incidents of a beginning of naval triumphs for which the 
country owes everything to the navy and nothing to government, 
excepting the president, who always listened to reason ; and in 
the narrative of those transactions it is due to Mr. Hamilton, 
Secretary of the Navy, to add that he was, at any rate, well 
disposed to venture a trial which at least one of his colleagues 
resisted as too desperate to be attempted. 

Baiubridge and Stewart remonstrated with the Secretary of 
the Navy against its suicide, by the hands of its own commander- 






CHAP. XI.] NAVY TO BE LAID UP. 



377 



in-chief. The secretary listened kindly to their appeal, but told 
them that the thing had been settled, on full consideration, in 
cabinet council. The frigates were to be laid up in the harbour 
of New York, their guns taken out of one side, the other side to 
be so fixed as to be rendered water-batteries, to be manned by 
their crews, and commanded by their own officers. Stewart and 
Bainbridge explained to the secretary why they were convinced 
our ships were superior to the English, and would eight times 
out often, capture them in equal combat. They were so urgent, 
that the secretary, unable, indeed not inclined, to refute their 
arguments, offered to take these gentlemen with him to the pre- 
sidential mansion, there to repeat what was deemed so clear and 
so important. Mr. Madison listened with the greatest attention 
to all they had to say ; candidly and anxiously weighed it. Eight 
times out of ten, sir, said they, with equal force we can hardly 
fail ; our men are better men, better disciplined, our midshipmen 
are not mere boys, only fit to carry orders, but young men, 
capable of reflection and action. Our guns are sighted, which 
is an improvement of our own the English know nothing of. 
While we can fire cannon, with as sure an aim as musketry or 
almost rifles, striking twice, out of every three shots, they must 
fire at random, without sight of their object or regard to the 
undulations of the sea, shooting over our heads, seldom hulling 
us, or even hitting our decks. We may be captured, and pro- 
bably shall be, even after taking prizes from them, because their 
numbers are so much greater than ours. But the American flag 
will never be dishonoured, seldom, if ever, struck to equal force. 
The nation can lose nothing but vessels, and a few lives dearly 
sold. You will give us victories then, you think, said the presi- 
dent, inclining to their advice. We do, sir, most confidently, and 
not upon irrational premises. Which victories, he added with 
animation, will give us ships ; for with victories Congress will 
supply them faster than they can be lost. Such, too, said he, 
recurring to the lessons of the Revolution, was the case in that 
war, when, notwithstanding a greater disparity of force than 
now, and much greater disparity of all nautical equipments, our 
officers and men proved themselves equal to the English. 'En- 
couraged by this reception, Bainbridge and Stewart "persevered 
so strenuously with Mr. Hamilton in another interview with 
him, that he told them the president had resolved to hold a 

32* 



378 NAVY TO BE LAID UP. [JUNE, 1812. 

cabinet council that evening to reconsider the matter, and they 
were desired to come to the secretary's residence and wait there 
till he returned from the council to apprize them of the result. 
At a late hour he did so, informing them that no change had 
taken place, but the vessels were to be laid up and used as har- 
bour defences. Mr. Gallatin was inflexible against sending the 
ships to sea, with all his preponderant influence in the adminis- 
tration where he had been accustomed to rule by Jefferson's high 
estimate of his abilities for any subject, naval, military, finan- 
cial, commercial, foreign, or domestic ; and Mr. Gallatin's mis- 
take was that of nearly the whole community. The merchants, 
almost to a man, laboured under absurd impressions of English 
nautical supremacy, pervading the sea-ports and most of the 
Atlantic states, that it was not only in the greater number of 
ships and seamen the English excelled the Americans, but that 
British seamen were superior beings, transcending all others, 
with whom Americans, man to man, and ship to ship, still less 
in squadrons or fleets, would have less chance than the Dutch, 
Venetians, Spanish, or French. In the most popular national 
song of that day, which was always sung in full chorus at the 
repeated celebrations of our naval victories, not only the prepos- 
terous language, but the deep-rooted sentiment of the inhabitants 
of our seaboard was, that although the "sons of Columbia would 
never be slaves, while the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its 
waves," yet " the trident of Neptune must never be hurled to 
incense the legitimate powers of the ocean." Those legitimate 
powers by divine right, and that popular prejudice which is the 
basis of that right, were the English mariners, against whom, 
the judgment of at least the maritime portions of the United 
States, coinciding with that of Mr. Gallatin, was, that in a war 
undertaken for the redress of flagrant wrongs by sea, it would 
be folly to trust either a vessel or a man there, except in the 
predatory and irresponsible cruises of private armed vessels. 
To such adventures Bainbridge and Stewart resolved to have 
recourse if their prayer for permission to take public ships of 
war to sea should be unheeded. Stewart had built a privateer 
called the Snapper, eventually commanded by Captain Pere- 
grine Green, and captured as soon as she cleared the Delaware 
capes. In that privateer, if denied authority to go forth in fri- 
gates, these gentlemen proposed to seek their fortunes on the 



CHAP. XL] NAVY TO GO TO SEA. 379 

ocean, serving each in rotation as captain or first officer. It was 
not with them, therefore, matter of mere national character: nor 
were they mere youths to be moved entirely by puerile or unself- 
ish considerations. They wanted fortune as well as fame, liveli- 
hood besides distinction. If the navy was laid up they saw their 
occupation gone for all advancement and all acquisition. Im- 
pelled by these strong motives to sturdy remonstrance, persever- 
ing after the Secretary of the Navy had announced to them the 
confirmed resolve of the executive to order all the ships of war 
to be laid up, Captains Bainbridge and Stewart occupied most 
of that night in composing a joint letter to the president, strongly 
setting forth reasons why that resolve should be rescinded. That 
letter has been lost, perhaps burnt in the conflagration of the 
public buildings at Washington ; possibly not deemed proper for 
the public eye, as it stated advantages of the American navy, 
which, though now known to and participated by the English, 
were then exclusively American. Among these were not only 
the superior discipline, seamanship, and ardour of our seamen, 
burning with passion to take vengeance for oppression, but seve- 
ral material improvements, one of which alone proved decisive 
in the naval engagements of that war. 

Their joint composition of that anxious night was couched in 
such plain language, that, when presented to the Secretary of the 
Navy next morning, he objected to it as too strong for communi- 
cation to the chief magistrate, and advised them to soften its 
terms. But as it was with them an affair of subsistence, involv- 
ing livelihood as well as reputation, they insisted on its being 
submitted without alteration. Diffident as Madison was of his 
own judgment at all times, especially where he was not familiar 
with the subject, and having long felt Mr. Gallatin's aptitude for 
almost any subject, the president was the man of his own admi- 
nistration, nevertheless, most resolved, as in duty bound, to carry 
into full effect the act of Congress declaring war. After, there- 
fore, candidly, wisely, and ingenuously weighing the manly re- 
monstrance against his own deliberate and twice considered 
determination, he yielded to the wishes of the two captains, who 
were told in another interview the same day, by the Secretary of 
the Navy, likewise gratified with the result, that the president 
would assume the responsibility of over-ruling the judgment of 
his cabinet and ordering the ships to sea. 



380 HULL'S ORDERS. [JUNE, 1812. 

It cannot be shown that an order to lay up the frigates in har- 
bour was given by the executive : but it is certain that such a 
determination was formed, and instructions imparted for the 
order, which was prevented merely by the timely remonstrance 
of Bainbridge and Stewart. To risk the ships of war at sea 
was more than government thought wise. And the first capture 
of an English by an American frigate, an event the effect of 
which was prodigious throughout Europe and America, and 
may have consequences of still greater magnitude than yet expe- 
rienced — that capture was made, if not in breach of orders, at 
least contrary to the timorous calculations of the navy depart- 
ment. If Hull had not hastened to sea and taken the Guerriere 
before his countermand reached him at Boston, he would not 
have made that capture, if indeed any such would ever have 
been made at all. 

The order to Captain Hull was as follows : — 

" Navy Department, 
18/ h Jane, 1812. 
" Sir : This day war has been declared between the < United 
Empire of Great Britain, Ireland, and their dependencies, and 
the United States of America and their territories,' and you are, 
with the force under your command, entitled to every belligerent 
right to attack and capture, and to defend. You will use the 
utmost dispatch to reach New York, after you have made up 
your complement of men, &c.,at Annapolis. In your way from 
thence you will not fail to notice the British flag, should it present 
itself. I am informed that the Belvidera is on our coast, but you 
are not to understand me as impelling you to battle previously 
to your having confidence in your crew, unless attacked, or with 
a reasonable prospect of success, of which you are to be, at 
your discretion, the judge. You are to reply to this, and inform 
me of your progress. 

" I am, respectfully, 

" Yr. obt. svt., 

"P. HAMILTON. 
" Captain Hull, of the U. S. Frigate Constitution, 
"Annapolis, Md." 

That discouraging and, (considered with immediate results,) 



CHAP. XL] HULL'S ORDERS. 33J 

incredibly pusillanimous order, was soon followed by another, as 
follows, of the same tenour : — 

" Navy Department, 
"3d July, 1812. 
" Sir : As soon as the Constitution is ready for sea, you will 
weigh anchor and proceed to New York. 

" If, on your way thither, you should fall in with an enemy's 
vessel, you will be guided in your proceeding by your own judg- 
ment, bearing in mind, however, that you are not, voluntarily, to 
encounter a force superior to your own. On your arrival at New 
York, you will report yourself to Commodore Rodgers. If he 
should not be in that port, you will remain there till further 
orders. 

" I am, &c, 

"P. HAMILTON. 
"Captain Isaac Hull, 
"Annapolis, Md." 

Thus was Captain Hull, the navy, the country, and the war, 
indebted to the accidental chase of the Constitution by a British 
squadron, preventing her getting into New York, for her being 
driven into Boston, and thence stealing to sea, when to be laid 
up in New York. On the 2d August Hull sailed from Boston, in 
the Constitution, and did not receive the following letter till after 
his return from capturing the Guerriere : — 

" Navy Department, 
"281/1 July, 1812. 
" Captain Isaac Hull :— 

" On the arrival of the Constitution in port, I have ordered 
Commodore Bainbridge to take command of her. 

" You will accordingly deliver up to him the command and 
proceed to this place and assume the command of the Frigate 
Constellation. 

" I am, &c, 

"P. HAMILTON." 

Before he received that order or sailed, Hull sent to the Secre- 



382 NAVY AT SEA. [JUNE., 1812. 

tary an account of the Constitution's escape from Broke's squad- 
ron, to which the following was the official reply : — 



" Navy Department, 
" 29ih July, 



JTMENT,) 

1812. 5 



" Captain Isaac Hull, Boston : — 

"Your letter of the 20th inst.,just received, has relieved me 
from much anxiety. 

" I am truly happy to hear of your safety. Remain at Boston 
until further orders. 

"I am, &c, 

"P. HAMILTON." 

Under such discouraging, perplexing and timid nursing did 
American naval ardour then lie almost stifled. A series of mere 
accidental circumstances, so trivial that they cannot fail to suggest 
to the least thoughtful mind, the extreme uncertainty of the little 
occurrences on which great events depend, enabled Hull to escape 
the doom which an affrighted government had prepared for him 
and all his naval comrades. 

With retraction of the order to keep the ships in port, Captain 
Stewart got an order from the Secretary of the Navy, with which, 
leaving Bainbridge behind him at Washington, Stewart has- 
tened toward New York, taking Lieutenant now Commodore 
Ridgely along, to go to sea with one of the smaller vessels, and 
scour the West India seas before the English were aware of the 
war, or could protect their large commerce in that quarter from 
the mischief Stewart contemplated. Meantime, before he reached 
Philadelphia, then a two days' journey from Washington, news 
had reached the former place that Rodgers had gone to sea with 
all the vessels, except the few otherwise disposed of. The Con- 
stitution sailed from Annapolis for New York early in July, and 
was chased off by a British squadron, from her prescribed port — 
eventually chased to all the fortunes of that gallant frigate, which, 
during half a century, has always been victorious under various 
commanders, and in every sea. Fears of the wise, would have 
laid her down to rot in ignominious inactivity. Importunity 
overcame cabinet deliberation which might have brought the 
war to an end, with nothing but defeats by land, without one 






CHAP. XI.] CONSTITUTION CHASED. 333 

redeeming triumph on the water. If so, the administration must 
have been borne down by overpowering opposition and its own 
incapacity, the war spirit discouraged, the war party overthrown, 
Congress either not called together at all till December, instead 
of being convoked in extraordinary session in May, 1813, and in 
December, not to vote taxes for vigorous prosecution of hostili- 
ties, but to ratify dishonourable peace. For both governments 
throughout the year 1812, were anxious for peace, rather than 
persevere in war, which too many, " like two of the commis- 
sioners who negotiated peace, considered could do no good to 
either nation, but must do harm to both." 

Before a battle came to our relief, to dispel the misapprehen- 
sions of all save the navy itself, before one blow was struck, naval 
confidence was justified by an exploit which has never yet been 
regarded as it ought to be in the comparison of American with 
English nautical aptitude. When the Constitution was chased 
in July 1812, by five frigates, and escaped them without superior 
swiftness, by the contrivance which her first lieutenant, now Com- 
modore Morris, suggested to Captain Hull, Mr. Cooper, whose 
naval judgment it may be rash to contradict, awards applause to 
the seamanship of the English pursuers as well as that of the 
American fugitive. Yet is it not palpable to any reflection that 
the enemy would have overtaken and captured our frigate, if not 
inferior in the fertility of resource and felicity of contrivance, 
which are part of the genius for all warfare, and throughout the 
war of 1812, seldom were displayed, any more than bold enter- 
prise, by the British navy ? The little vessel in which Lieutenant, 
now Commodore Crane put to sea was taken by the enemy, and 
then a prize to Broke's squadron, on board of which Crane was 
a prisoner. Such was the eagerness of the English to overhaul 
the Constitution, that at one time they all cut all their boats 
adrift as they were kedging in pursuit, after the American fri- 
gate's manner of going ahead. But was there anything to pre- 
vent their putting the small prize with them, the Nautilus, in tow 
of all the boats in the whole squadron, and so forcing the Nautilus 
ahead of the Constitution or alongside of her at such a distance 
as to enable the guns of the small vessel to drive in the boats 
of the Constitution, when the British frigates might readily have 
overtaken and reduced her? In the first essay of conflict there 
was, independent of superior gunnery and navigation, evidence 



384 NAVAL CONFIDENCE. [JUNE, 1812. 

of that superiority of talent which, without unbecoming national 
prejudice, we may hope belongs to a people as seafaring as the 
English, but more intelligent, more susceptible of high discipline, 
more obedient because more free. 

Before that demonstration of naval fortitude and ingenuity, with 
those of active bravery soon following, all abundant with proofs 
of skill, there was hardly a man in either England or America, 
who did not believe the English sailor superior to the American, 
as well as to the Dutch, the French, the Spanish and all others 
they encountered : not only in numbers, but in genius for the sea, 
contrivance, endurance, experience, confidence, most of the attri- 
butes of success. A contrary assurance was not a national senti- 
ment in the United States: but naval faith, cherished by seamen, 
like Vestal fire or the mysteries of religious worship, in sacred 
and fervent custody, which no want of occasion, or other's incre- 
dulity could impair ; conviction which now not even many defeats 
can destroy. It is now a national sentiment, which Great Bri- 
tain will contest, but America feels is not to be acquired, but only 
maintained. When the war broke out Great Britain, surprised 
by an American effort believed to be beyond the spirit of our 
government or the energy of our people, knowing that her inte- 
rest lay not in fighting, but in despoiling the United States ; with 
all her means employed in Europe, Great Britain had some 
apprehensions for her American territorial possessions, but none 
for naval supremacy, which her few ships in this hemisphere 
were reckoned more than enough to preserve. British sentiment, 
expressed by Canning and Brougham in Parliament, universal 
throughout the nation and the navy above all, was profound con- 
tempt for American naval resistance. No American fleet, squad- 
ron, or hardly single ship had ever withstood the overwhelming 
might of British broadsides, which ruled the waves, and not a sail 
spread but by their permission. The people of the United States 
coincided in both opinions; in strong hope of the conquest of Cana- 
da, but with no hopes of naval success. Congress did little, the 
executive less for the navy, distrusted, almost despised, sentenced 
to be dismantled and disgraced by our own constituted authority. 
While war was begun without taxes, troops or organization, re- 
lying on its dry declaration by Congress, the president's procla- 
mation of it and other empty demonstrations, there was still con- 
fidence, false confidence in the raw voluntary levies to whom the 



CHAP. XL] AMERICAN NAVY. 305 

conquest of Canada was committed. General William Hull 
went forth to the conquest of Canada, heralding his progress by 
menacing announcements; high and general anticipations went 
with him. At the same time Captain Isaac Hull had the fortune 
to be the first American seaman that met an English ship of war 
in equal combat. His crew were not as thoroughly prepared as 
lie wished, and there is tradition by no means to his disparage- 
ment, but quite the contrary, that Hull and his equally considerate 
first officer Morris, doubted whether a longer cruise and more 
sea service were not necessary to prepare the men for so moment- 
ous an issue as the first trial of arms by sea between sovereign 
America and Great Britain. It was even said that these pru- 
dent officers were more anxious than the issue proved to be ne- 
cessary, about a trial upon which all England looked with 
perfect certainty of success and nearly all this country with pain- 
ful misgivings. No one can compare the American and English 
official accounts of it without acknowledgment that accident or 
fortune had little to do with the battle, which was like nearly all 
the other naval engagements throughout the war ; those fought 
after England had time to recover from her surprise, and endea- 
vour to imitate or excel her antagonist as well as those before. 

The suppressed but inextinguishable fire of well-considered con- 
fidence burning in naval bosoms, lighted indignant, but thought- 
ful and unequaled mariners, to such battle as commands fortune, 
repairs accident and insures victory. More extensive or more 
numerous battles would add little to the credentials of the few 
gained. The blaze of triumph was continued with little interrup- 
tion. It established a character for naval excellence which it 
will be harder to lose than to get. It would be weakness to sup- 
pose that England has lost the sword of maritime authority. To 
no nation have American naval triumphs been more improving 
than to her. It would be still greater weakness to flatter the 
American navy to delude itself by imitating that vain-glorious 
English confidence which was part of the means of its discom- 
fiture. But the history of the war of 1812 has passed into the 
judgment of the world, that America has what England had of 
naval pre-eminence : that in another war we have to keep and 
she to get what in the last war we won and she lost. No mere 
scale of operations can change the result, unless ship timber and 
numbers constitute national nautical superiority, not men and sea- 
vol. 1. — 33 



386 ENGLISH SENTIMENT. [AUG., 1812. 

manship, alacrity and ingenuity, freedom and love of the country 
which gives it without restraint. In the glorious illustrations of 
naval vigour by the war of 1812, its dawn was adorned by splen- 
did and vivifying rays, which beamed with equal brilliancy upon 
its last moments, shedding upon American annals lustre not easily 
effaced, impressions of American power felt throughout the globe, 
memorials of superior seamanship, enterprise, discipline, consider- 
ate courage and humanity, always conspicuous and uniform, 
which have become national property, never to be yielded but 
with national existence. 

To appreciate the naval effect of the capture of the first British 
frigate we must inquire of English opinion on the occasion ; of 
which the following from a London Journal indicates the whole : 

"We have been accused," said it, "of sentiments unworthy of 
Englishmen, because we described what we saw and felt on the 
occasion of the capture of the Guerriere. We witnessed the gloom 
which that event cast over high and honourable minds ; we par- 
ticipated in the vexation and regret ; and it is the first time that we 
have ever heard that the striking of the flag on the high seas to 
anything like an equal force, should be regarded by Englishmen 
with complacency or satisfaction. If it be a fault to cherish 
among our countrymen ' that chastity of honour which feels a 
stain like a wound ;' if it be an error to consider the reputation 
of our navy as tenderly and delicately alive to reproach — that 
fault, that error we are likely often to commit ; and we cannot 
but consider the sophistry, which would render us insensible to 
the dishonour of our flag as peculiarly noxious at the present 
conjuncture. It is not merely that an English frigate has been 
taken, after what we are free to confess, may be called a brave 
resistance, but that it has been taken by a neiv enemy, an enemy 
unaccustomed to such triumphs, and likely to be rendered inso- 
lent and confident by them. He must be a weak politician who 
does not see how important the first triumph is in giving a tone 
and character to the war. Never before, in the history of the 
world, did an English frigate strike to an American, and 
though we cannot say that Captain Dacres, under all circum- 
stances, is punishable for this act, yet we do say, there are com- 
manders in the English navy, who would a thousand times 
rather have gone down with their colours flying, than have set 
their fellow-sailors so fatal an example." 



V 

CHAP. XL] ENGLISH SENTIMENT. 387 

To indicate the political effect of Hull's victory, the same 
opinion was at the time equally significant. It deplored what 
is unquestionable, that the naval reign of Great Britain was at 
an end the moment another nation could dispute it, whose com- 
mercial marine was only second to hers, and rapidly in progress 
to outstrip it in numbers of tonnage and seamen. 

"We have received," said a London Journal, "letters and pa- 
pers from New York to the 14th, and from Washington to the 
9th nit. We are not surprised to find from these, that the repeal 
of the orders in council, ample and unconditional as it was, has 
not satisfied the demagogues of America. The American gov- 
ernment has now thrown off the mask, even of moderation, 
which its members have assumed in their negotiations with this 
country, and has made common cause with France in her attempt 
to subjugate the world. The tone of the National Intelligencer, 
the organ of Mr. Madison's government, previous to the arrival 
in America, of the formal repeal of the orders in council, was 
moderate, if not pacific, but now that Great Britain has receded 
from her high and commanding attitude, as mistress of the seas 
and dictator of the maritime laws of nations, America, like an 
ungrateful and malignant minion, turns upon her benefactor, and 
demands still further concessions — the American flag is now to 
secure all that sails under it. This is precisely the language 
of the French government— free ships make free goods, has 
been eternally echoed in our ears, since the commencement of 
the war; and but yesterday we were told by France> that the 
treaty of Utrecht was the line of demarkation of our maritime 
rights. This is bold language to utter to a nation whose seamen 
have successively beaten every power in Europe into a confes- 
sion of their superiority — a nation whose fleets have annihilated 
in succession, those of Spain, Holland, France, Russia, and Den- 
mark. Our maritime superiority is, in fact, part of the nation' 's 
right. It has been the right of the conqueror, since men as- 
sociated together in civilization, to give laws to the conquered, 
and is Great Britain to be driven from the proud eminence 
which the blood and treasures of her sons have attained for her 
among nations, by a piece of striped bunting, flying at the mast- 
heads of a few fir-built frigates, manned by a handful of bas- 
tards and outlaivs?" 

I shall touch but briefly on the naval battles of 1S12, already 



388 AMERICAN NAVAL VICTORIES. [AUG., 1812. 

the theme of so much description and controversy, and only as 
introductory to my task which begins with the succeeding year. 
What shall we do for vessels on Lake Erie, said Mr. Gallatin to 
a young lieutenant, without any, or money to build them ? Take 
them, said Elliott. Accordingly, on the night of 8th October, 1812, 
a week before the attack on Queenstown, the first essay was made 
in the Niagara by capturing the Caledonia, a considerable brig 
of war, next year well employed in Perry's action, and a mer- 
chant vessel, the Detroit, both anchored under the British bat- 
teries, boarded, taken, and brought off, by an enterprise which 
Mr. Clay declared in the House of Representatives, with the 
ardour which always, perhaps some of the extravagance which 
at times marked his stimulation of hostilities, an enterprize which 
for judgment, skill, and courage, has never been surpassed. 
Lieutenant Roach, since Mayor of Philadelphia, now Treasurer 
of the Mint of the United States, and a reverend gentleman who 
since officiated as the respectable pastor of an Episcopal Church 
at Newcastle, Delaware, where he died, then Ensign Prestman, 
of the regular army, were volunteers in the boat with Elliott. 
General Towson, for many years paymaster-general of the army 
of the United States, then captain of artillery, was a volunteer 
in the other boat commanded by sailing-master Watts, of the 
navy, killed a few days after at the battle of Queenstown. Ge- 
neral Winfleld Scott, then a lieutenant-colonel, and Captain 
Barker, since Mayor of Philadelphia and comptroller of the 
treasury of the United States, — volunteered, but were not permit- 
ted to go in that expedition. General Towson and Commodore 
Elliott, more than twenty years afterwards, when there were 
laurels enough for both, fell into angry dispute about their 
respective shares; appealing to public judgment in printed pub- 
lications, which excite regret that such deeds should be tarnished 
by such controversy. 

Hull's capture of the Guerriere the 19th of August, 1812, 
would probably have taken place with greater comparative de- 
struction, had not both ships, in the spirit of national emulation 
which fired each, approached so close as to deprive our gunnery 
of its advantages by sighted and deliberate firing. When the 
Wasp sloop of war, under Captain Jones, on the 18th of October, 
1812, captured the English brig Frolic, of greater size and num- 
ber of crew, the same advantage was conceded to the enemy by 



CHAP. XL] NAVAL VICTORIES. 339 

still closer approach, by actual contact, and the English vessel 
was carried by boarders headed by Lieutenant, now Commodore 
Biddle, who hauled down the British flag himself. On the 28th 
of October, 1812, Decatur, in the United States frigate, captured 
the Macedonian, when, as the English ship held off with the 
weather-gage, the advantage of American gunnery was more 
striking: and of orderly discipline; the English ship tumultuous 
with huzzas accompanying her broadsides, while Decatur's crew 
were, as he charged them to be, as quiet as Quaker meeting. On 
the 29th of December, 1812, the Constitution, under Captain 
Bainbndge, captured the Java, British frigate, under circum- 
stances so nearly resembling the other successes that they need 
not be repeated. The Constitution and United States were larger 
than the Guerriere, Macedonian, and Java. But the Frolic was 
larger than the Wasp : and the disparity of destruction in all 
these cases proved that something more than relative size was 
the cause of invariable success and much greater destruction. 

On these occasions, English prisoners often behaved as if their 
captors were their prisoners : and American victors sometimes 
carried kindness beyond the policy of that virtue. Between all 
hostile nations, courtesy, clemency, and humanity, are to be cul- 
tivated ; between kindred people they are indispensable comity. 
Captain Bainbridge not only paroled forthwith Lieutenant-Gene- 
ral Hyslop and his suite, taken in the Java, but restored all then- 
plate and valuables with, perhaps, excess of generosity. Among 
the testimony laid before Congress by the select committee charg- 
ed, on Mr. Clay's motion, with Macon at its head, to report on the 
spirit and manner in which the war was waged by the enemy, 
it was certified by two American officers, Berry and Weaver, 
taken in the Chesapeake, that all their prize-money was taken 
from them, their side-arms taken, kept, and worn, never restored 
as usual, and so great was the rage for plunder, that Captain 
Lawrence, mortally wounded, could not obtain a bottle of wine 
from his private sea-stores, without a note from the doctor to the 
English Lieutenant, Wallis, commanding the prize, who ordered 
our wounded midshipmen to be instantly cut down, if they stood 
in what he deemed an improper part of the vessel. Among the 
many benefits of the war of 1812, there was none greater than 
breaking down that idolatry of England, which rebuked back this 
country to colonial reverence, and inflamed that to arrogance 

33* 



390 BAINBRIDGE, DECATUR, HULL. [OCT., 1812. 

and animosity detrimental to both. There yet remains too much 
lingering spirit of this American infidelity and European insolence 
not to justify unreserved exposure of the frailties of both in the 
second war, which superadded moral to political independence. 

The capture of the Alert, an English sloop of war, by the 
Essex, Captain Porter, a small frigate, but much superior to her 
enemy, though the first capture of the war by sea, has not been 
mentioned before, because it was a conquest so easy, as to excite 
less interest than the other captures of 1S12. Nor shall I now 
recount the numerous captures of that gallant ship, on her distant 
voyage, but wait till we come to the catastrophe of her adven- 
turous cruize in the Pacific, in February, 1814. For the same 
reason, the cruise of Commodore Rodgers in the President, with 
his squadron, is also omitted. To detail mere captures without 
combats would be devoid of interest. Enough of the maritime 
occurrences of 1812 has been summarily presented to show that 
American ships of war cruised mostly without molestation, gene- 
rally with unlooked-for success. The grandeur of British do- 
minion by sea became fabulous in six months. The conviction 
was general, that there, as upon the lakes, it was reduced to the 
mere power of ship-building; that, while the numbers were 
against us, the prowess and palm were transferred from the Old 
World to the New. 

Of the brave founders of this empire of opinion, Bainbridge, 
Decatur, and Hull, have since passed away : and we may deal 
with them historically. Decatur and Bainbridge were both 
conspicuous in events hereafter to be described. Hull was not 
at sea again during the war : but rested ashore on his laurels. 
He was an excellent seaman, but no enthusiast. Decatur envied 
him the fortune to be first in the race of renown, which Hull 
would never have envied Decatur; but took it as it came, as, 
perhaps, he would have let it pass, without distressing his placid 
nature if it had escaped him. Decatur was a restless spirit who 
loved danger and bloodshed, and fell in a duel from a pinnacle 
of distinction, when striving to repair the deficiencies he regret- 
ted, of early education. Hull died quietly in his bed, giving 
directions for his own funeral. No officer of the navy bore a 
larger part in its performances, in the French, the African, and 
the English wars, than Bainbridge: none was, perhaps, so instru- 
mental in preventing its being cast away in 1812 as unfit to be 



CHAP. XL] FRIGATE CHESAPEAKE. 391 

trusted at sea. But his conduct in 1S14, when the government 
of Massachusetts attempted to put it out of the pale of national 
community and protection, was the most eminent of all Bain- 
bridge's services. The responsibility he assumed, moral and 
patriotic courage he displayed on that trying occasion, deserve 
more applause than his battles; as shall be fully made known in 
the annals of another year. 

The tide of naval triumphs was interrupted by the capture 
of the frigate Chesapeake, almost in sight of Boston harbour, on 
the 1st day of June, 1813, shortly after the extra session of Con- 
gress began. More than thirty years since that event, recol- 
lection is still vivid of the superstitious presentiment, which 
many felt when informed that Captain Lawrence had been 
challenged by Commodore Broke of the Shannon, and gone out 
to fight him. On the 22d of June, 1807, the ill-starred Chesa- 
peake struck her flag in our own waters to the British ship 
Leopard, whose commander forcibly took from our ship some 
of her crew. That outrageous aggression would have produced 
war then, if the political pilot, Jefferson, had not been bent on 
the impracticable experiment of perpetual peace, which had the 
effect of increasing national exasperation, by constraining pro- 
tracted submission to continually multiplying acts of injustice. 
The five following years completed the cycle of American wrongs, 
forbearance, and indignation, and elicited the declaration of war 
with a new era of naval annals, which brought unexpected and 
providential relief. From the depths of national degradation, 
and maritime despondency the country was raised all at once to 
intoxicating heights of triumphant assurance, to which Captain 
Lawrence fell a victim. In December, 1812, in the Hornet, 
sloop of war, after blockading an English vessel of superior 
force, the brig of war, Bonne Citoyenne, in the port of San Sal- 
vador, and challenging her Captain, Green, who disingenuously 
declined to fight him — Captain Lawrence, in the course of a cruise 
among the West India Islands, sunk another British brig of war 
of about his own force, the Peacock, with transcendent dispatch, 
in a quarter of an hour, in sight of the Espiegle, another British 
vessel of war which did not venture to engage him. After this 
round of amazing success, he returned covered with trophies, was 
restored to the rank, which, to his deep mortification and against 
his strong remonstrances, he had lost by the promotion of Cap- 



392 LAWRENCE. [JUNE, 1813. 

tain Morris, and was appointed to the command of the frigate 
Chesapeake. Desiring to remain a short time on shore, he 
offered to exchange with Captain Stewart the Chesapeake, then 
ready for sea, for the Constitution, to which Captain Stewart had 
been appointed, which vessel, then at Boston, it would require 
some time to refit. Stewart was detained at Norfolk, fortifying 
the Constellation there from the British blockading squadron, 
which never had enterprise enough to capture that frigate, 
though they prevented her from going to sea during the whole 
war. On his way north, Captain Stewart heard at Washington 
tidings of the Chesapeake's capture. If he had commanded her, 
more prudent than Lawrence, never having challenged one ene- 
my's vessel, nor sunk another, with such rapidity of execution 
as to disarm his discretion, it might have been that the Chesa- 
peake's intemperate disaster would not have taken place, or its 
revulsion of feeling in both countries, discouraging ours, as if our 
flood of naval triumphs had turned to ebb, and transporting Great 
Britain like another victory of Camperdown, or Trafalgar, when 
she struck Holland, France, and Spain, from the annals of naval 
contest. We soon recovered from this solitary blow, although it 
shifted upon this country the unwelcome and mortifying burthen 
of apologizing for a defeat more than atoned for by a gallant cap- 
tain, who expired with words of professional pride and exem- 
plary courage on his lips, that will long rally his countrymen to 
victory or death. 

The death and misfortune of Captain Lawrence were a noble 
but not uncommon sacrifice of the bravest and truest individuals, 
at the shrine of glory, for the benefit of their country. Lawrence, 
appointed to command the sloop of war Hornet, altered from a 
brig to a ship, was sent, in 1811, with Lieutenant, now Commo- 
dore Biddle, as bearer of dispatches to France and England, 
where the frigate Constitution, Captain Hull, the corvette Essex, 
Captain Porter, and the sloop of war Wasp, Captain Jones, then 
were also on similar errands. The inimical feeling between 
England and this country displayed itself on all occasions be- 
tween vessels of war, which animosity induced Lawrence to keep 
his ship always ready for action whenever an English vessel 
was near, with one of which he had angry explanations in the 
British Channel — the brig Thracian, Captain Symes. After a run 
of only eighteen days from Europe to America, the Hornet, in 



CHAP. XI.] MIDSHIPMAN'S DIARY. 393 

May 1812, landed Lieutenant Biddle, as bearer of dispatches, 
at New York, where the frigates President, Captain Rodgers, 
the United States, Captain Decatur, and Congress, Captain 
Smith, were lying all ready for sea. The following extract 
from a midshipman's diary, on board the Hornet, well expresses 
the feeling with which that squadron forthwith went to sea. 
" June 21. This morning the declaration of war by the United 
States against Great Britain was received — on shore all is com- 
motion and bustle — on board every countenance is beaming 
with delight, for many are the bold tars in our squadron who 
have been impressed for years in the English naval service 
that may now have an opportunity of wreaking their vengeance 
upon those that have oppressed them. At 10 A. M., Commo- 
dore Rodgers hove out the signal to weigh ; never was anchor 
to the cat-head sooner, nor topsail sheeted home and to the mast- 
head with more dispatch than upon the present occasion ; the 
smallest boy on board seems anxious to meet what is now 
looked upon as the common tyrant of the ocean, for they had 
heard the woeful tales of the older tars. When the ship was 
under weigh, Captain Lawrence delivered a short and appropri- 
ate address to the crew, which was returned by three hearty 
cheers, and swore never to disgrace their country's flag. Captain 
Lawrence had the crew called to their quarters, and told them 
that if there were any amongst them who were disaffected, or 
one that had not rather sink than surrender to the enemy with 
gun for gun, that he should be immediately, and uninjured, 
landed or sent back in the pilot boat : the reply, fore and aft, was 
— not one. At half-past two o'clock P. M., passed Sandy Hook 
and put to sea." 

The midshipman's diary next gives an account of the chase 
of the Belvidera, English frigate, Captain Byron, by Rodgers' 
squadron, which the Belvidera skillfully eluded, and not without 
killing and wounding several men, including Rodgers, badly 
wounded by the bursting of a gun on board the President. The 
first American prize made that war was an English merchant 
brig called the Dolphin, sent in under charge of Midshipman 
Conner, acting sailing-master of the Hornet, now commanding 
the American squadron in the Gulf of Mexico. Rodgers' 
squadron of three frigates, a sloop and brig of war, sailed as far 
north as Cape Sables, on that short cruise. Why not, consisting 



394 LAWRENCE. [JUNE, 1813. 

of the four other American frigates that might have been part of 
it, go off Halifax and there search for the enemy at his head 
quarters? The naval war began by an American squadron 
chasing a solitary English frigate, the Belvidera, and an English 
squadron chasing in like manner, the American frigate Consti- 
tution, on the same cruising ground, not far from the same time, 
when combination and system on our part, before these disjointed 
cruises took place, might have opened hostilities with an exploit 
of incalculable results. The British navy in North America was 
at the mercy of a well-combined operation of the American at 
that moment. 

Lawrence after that cruise with Rodgers, having seen the vic- 
torious Constitution in Nantasket Roads, returned from her cap- 
ture of the Guerriere, sailed on another cruise, with Bainbridge 
as captain of the Constitution, and in December, 1S12, they 
found the English corvette Bonne Citoyenne, in the harbour of 
St. Salvador, once the capital of Brazil. Bainbridge left that 
neighbourhood, first having addressed a letter sent to the English 
consul at St. Salvador, informing him that the Constitution 
would go to a distance to prevent the possibility of her interfe- 
rence, while the Hornet engaged the Bonne Citoyenne. She 
had more guns and more men than the Hornet. At the same 
time Lawrence sent what the midshipman's diary calls a formal 
challenge to Captain Greene, of the enemy's corvette. That 
challenge probably caused the capture of the Chesapeake and 
Lawrence's death. Yet its being sent by the brave New Jer- 
seymen who ventured it, Bainbridge and Lrwrence, and being 
declined by the commander of an English vessel of superior 
force, could not be without good effect for us among the sea- 
men of both nations. For many days Lawrence blockaded the 
Englishman at St. Salvador, frequently standing in close to the 
harbour, and making there the usual demonstrations of defiance, 
which Captain Greene not only declined, but assigned for it the 
disingenuous and offensive reason that Bainbridge, who had 
given his honour not to interfere, would, nevertheless, do so. 
Public sentiment in England would not have tolerated any 
English captain's refusing, in the same way, the challenge of a 
Frenchman. The spirit of American seamanship was disclosed 
in this proceeding, and its daring can hardly be condemned, not- 
withstanding the unfortunate fate it contributed to bring upon the 
gallant Lawrence. Driven from that neighbourhood by the Mon- 



CHAP. XI.] LIEUTENANT COX. 395 

tague 74, Lawrence made sail for the West Indies, and on the 24th 
February, 1813, off Demarara, engaged within half pistol-shot, 
and sunk in fifteen minutes, the English brig of war Peacock, 
Captain Peake, a vessel of about equal force. During the battle 
another British brig of war, the L'Espiegle, mounting fifteen 32 
pound carronades, and two long guns, lay at anchor close by. 

The particulars of the engagement between the Chesapeake 
and the Shannon have been too often published to justify ano- 
ther edition of them. Mr. Washington Irving, in 1816, from the 
account of officers of the Chesapeake, Mr. Fennimore Cooper 
in 1839, from authentic and professional sources of intelligence, 
have so fully explained that, the only counterblast to American 
naval triumphs over the great conquerors of the seas, that I shall 
add only what has been hitherto not overlooked, but suppressed, 
from mistaken motives; the condemnation of acting Lieutenant 
William S. Cox, to whom was ascribed the loss of the American 
frigate. A court-martial, of which Decatur was President, con- 
vened on board his ship the United States, in March, 1814, for 
the trial of Mr. Cox, (and some inferior officers, two midship- 
men, the bugleman, and a seaman,) whose judgment it would 
not become one unskilled in naval tactics, unaffected with naval 
sympathies, to contradict. It is said that the absence of a mem- 
ber of the court, which reduced its numbers from thirteen to 
twelve, changed a sentence of death, as it might otherwise have 
been, to that of being cashiered, with a perpetual incapacity to 
serve in the navy of the United States. It has also been said 
that the blood of Byng, whether justly or unjustly shed, was 
the seed of all the British naval victories. Perhaps, in the 
state of public feeling at the time, the sacrifice of the surviving 
officer of the Chesapeake, a young man of respectable character 
and connections, was due to national policy, or naval pride. But 
the gentleman condemned, and his country, are both entitled to 
the historical vindication, which is little known, that he was 
honourably acquitted of the stigmatizing charges of which he was 
accused, and convicted and sentenced only of what any brave 
man might be guilty; of what a humane man might be proud; 
and of what many brave men were much more deplorably guilty 
in many of the battles of that war, without being tried, much 
less blasted for it. Of the first charge, cowardice ; the second, 
disobedience of orders; part of the third, desertion of his quar- 






396 COURT-MARTIAL. [MARCH, 1S14. 

ters, Mr. Cox was honourably acquitted ; and no one can read the 
testimony on his trial, without acknowledging that he was wholly 
innocent. He was condemned for neglect of duty and unofficer- 
like conduct, the extent of which offences appear by the evidence, 
to have been no more than accompanying Captain Lawrence 
when disabled, from the quarter-deck to the cock-pit, and not 
succeeding in getting back to his station. It is due to the true 
account of that memorable transaction to give the testimony of 
those present, which is, therefore, annexed at large in the pro- 
ceedings of the court-martial. 

The United States Frigate United States. 
At a general court martial held on board the United States Frigate United 
States, lying in the harbour of New London, in the stale of Connecticut, in pur- 
suance of a precept, issued under the hand and seal of the Hon. Wm. Jones, Sec- 
retary of the Navy of the United States, bearing date the 17th day of March, 
Anno Domini, 1814, and directed to Stephen Decatur, Esq., captain in the Navy 
of the United States, on Friday, the 15th day of April, 1814. 
Present: — 

Captain Stephen Decatur, President. 
" Jacob Jones. 
Master and Comd. James Biddle. 

Lieut. Geo. W. Rodgers. 
" Wm. Carter, Jk. 
" John T. Shu brick. 
" Besj'n W. Booth. 
" Alex'r Claxton. 
" David Conner. 
" John Gallagher. 
" John D. Sloat. 
" Matthew C. Perrt. 
THO'S OLIVER SELFRIDGE, Esq.., Judge Advocate. 

The judge advocate read the precept from the Hon. Wm. Jones, secretary a? 
aforesaid, convoking the court, with the charges and specifications against 
Lieutenant William S. Cox, Midshipmen James W. Forrest and Henry P. Plesh- 
man, William Brown, bugleman, Joseph Russell, captain of the second gun, 
thereto annexed. The judge advocate then read the warrant of Captain Stephen 
Decatur, as president of the court, appointing Thomas Oliver Selfridge judge 
advocate of this court. The judge advocate then administered the oath pre- 
scribed by law, to the president of the court, and to each of the members seve- 
rally, and the president then administered the oath prescribed by law, to the 
judge advocate: 

When Lieutenant William S. Cox, and Midshipmen James W. Forrest and 
Henry P. Pleshman, and William Brown, bugleman, and Joseph Russell, captain 
of the second gun, came prisoners before the court, and the following charges 
and specifications of the same were audibly read to them by the judge advocate. 






CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 397 

CHARGES. 

William S. Cox, Lieutenant in the Navy of the United States. 

1st. FOR COWARDICE. 

Specification. In that he deserted his station in time of action with the enemy, 
and continued absent therefrom. 

2d. FOR DISOBEDIENCE OF ORDERS. 

Specification. In that having been charged with the command of the second 
division of the gun-deck, he left his station in time of action with the enemy, 
and after having so left it, was seen by his commanding officer, James Lawrence, 
Esq., in the cock-pit of the said frigate, who ordered him to return to his quar- 
ters, which orders he did not execute. 

3d. DESERTION FROJI HIS QUARTERS AND NEGLECT OF DUTI. 

Specification 1st. In that he was charged with the command of the 2d division 
of the gun-deck, from which he withdrew in time of action with the enemy, 
without orders, while the men of said division remained at their quarters. 

Specification 2d. In that he did not do his utmost to aid and assist to take, or 
destroy the enemy's vessel, the Shannon, by animating and encouraging in his 
own person, conduct and example, the inferior officers and men to fight cour- 
ageously ; but did, contrary to orders, and his duty as an officer, leave his station 
in time of action, and deny to Midshipman Higginbotham, the use of coercive 
means to prevent the men from deserting their quarters, running or jumping 
below, and thereby compel them to return to their duty, and repel the boarders 
of the enemy. 

4th. UNOFFICER-LIKE CONDUCT. 

Specification 1st. In that he quitted his station designated in the foregoing 
specifications in time of action with the enemy, proceeded to tfte upper deck, 
and thence while the enemy was boarding or attempting to board the frigate 
Chesapeake, accompanied the person of his disabled commander before named, 
to the gun-deck, and there continued without properly exerting himself through 
the remainder of the action. 

Specification 2d. In that, after having left his station and proceeded to the 
upper deck, and thence, while the enemy was boarding or attempting to board 
the frigate Chesapeake, accompanied the person of his disabled commander to 
the gun-deck, he did not return to the command of his division, but went forward 
on the gun-deck, and while there, and the men were retreating below, commanded 
them to go to their duty, without enforcing that command himself, or directing, 
or permitting others to do so : where, and in the steerage of the frigate he contin- 
ued during the remainder of the action, contrary to his duty and the good ex- 
ample of an officer. 

To which said Cox plead "not guilty" to the charges exhibited against him, 
whereupon said Cox applied to the court to have counsel to aid him in his de- 
fence which the court granted, under the restriction that the counsel for the 
accused, or the accused himself should propose all his cross interrogatories to 
the witnesses for the prosecution, through the judge advocate, and that all ques- 
tions should be proposed to the witnesses for the accused in the same manner, 
and that the defence of the accused being made by counsel, must be reduced to 
writing, and might be read either by himself or his counsel. 

The court adjourned to meet to-morrow at ten o'clock. 
VOL. I. — 34 / 



398 COURT MARTIAL. [1814. 

April 16//«, 1814. The court met pursuant to adjournment. 
Present: — 

Captain Stephen Decatur, President. 
" Jacob Jones. 
Master and Comd. James Biddle. 

Lieut. Wm. Carter, Jr. 
" Thomas T. Shubrick. 
" Benj'n W. Booth. 
" Alex'r. Claxt»n. 
" David Conner. 
" John Gallagher. 
" John D. Sloat. 
" Matthew C. Perry. 
THO'S OLIVER SELFRIDGE, ESQ., Judge Advocate. 

Lieutenant George W. Rodgers being ordered on other duty, is excused by the 
president from any further attendance upon this court martial. 

Lieutenant George Budd, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness for the 
prosecution, on the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, on the respective charges 
exhibited against him as aforesaid. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you on board the United States Frigate 
Chesapeake, on the 1st of June 1813 ? 

Answer. I was, as second lieutenant, James Lawrence, Esq., commander, and 
we commenced a cruise at 12 A. M. with a large sail in sight, which we sup- 
posed was an enemy's frigate, and we stood to the eastward and fell in with, 
and brought her to action before sun-down. 

Question by the same. How did you engage her 1 

Answer. We came down on her starboard quarter and engaged her, having 
the weather-guage at pistol-shot distance, and as soon as we could train our guns 
upon her. 

Question by the same. How was the action fought, and what was the result of 
it? 

Answer. At the time we came up, the enemy's frigate was lying-to, with 
her yards aback. As we came up, we had considerable weigh upon the Chesa- 
peake, and, as we ranged up, I perceived that we were luffing-to ; the cannon- 
ading commenced from the enemy and was immediately returned from the 
Chesapeake, and, in my opinion, we lay broadside and broadside ten or twelve 
minutes, and fired three rounds, but I cannot positively state the time with 
accuracy. At this time, we had ranged so far ahead, that my division of guns, 
which was the first, could not be trained upon the enemy. Midshipman Curtiss, 
one of the captain's aids, came to the gun-deck with orders from Captain Law- 
rence, to call the boarders. Being a boarder, I immediately left my quarters and 
called out " boarders away." I then passed to the second division on the gun- 
deck, which was Lieutenant Cox's, and looked for, but could not find him, and 
called out " boarders away," and proceeded to the spar-deck, up the main hatch- 
way, and gained the starboard side of the quarter-deck, abaft the fife-rail, and 
saw a number of our men there, I suppose about twenty or twenty-five. At this 
moment I discovered people on the quarter-deck, passing to the forecastle, 
which I did not know to be the enemv until I discovered a British uniform. 



CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 399 

About twenty-five or thirty men passed forward, which I suppose was the first 
division of the enemy's boarders, and suppose that as many as sixty or seventy 
of the enemy had now collected on the quarter-deck. From the time I gained 
the quarter-deck till this time, which I suppose was two or three minutes, there 
was no battle on either side, and I perceived that the Chesapeake had fallen foul 
of the enemy. 

Question by the same. How long did you remain upon the upper deck, and did 
you see Lieutenant Cox while you remained there? 

Answer. From the time I gained the quarter-deck till I left it, six or seven 
minutes, I did not see Lieutenant Cox, and I should have seen him unless he 
was abaft the enemy. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox before the ship was car- 
ried? if not, when did you see him and what situation was he in? 

Answer. I did not see him before the ship was carried, and did not see him' 
until we were on our passage to Halifax. 

Question, by the same. Did Lieutenant Cox voluntarily inform you after the 
engagement, that he assisted in carrying Captain Lawrence to the cockpit after 
he was wounded ? and did he further inform you that Captain Lawrence was 
displeased with him, and that his commander ordered him to his quarters? 

Answer. In Halifax, Lieutenant Cox did inform me that he assisted in carry- 
ing Captain Lawrence to the cockpit, and that Captain Lawrence appeared to 
be displeased with him and did order him to his quarters. 

Question by the court. Please to relate to the court the precise words Lieutenant 
Cox used? 

Answer. He related to me in Halifax, that he assisted Captain Lawrence after 
he was wounded, in conveying him to the cockpit, and when Captain Lawrence 
discovered he was with him, he appeared to be displeased and ordered him to 
go to his quarters immediately. 

Question by judge advocate. Was Lieutenant Cox at his quarters at any period 
of the action after you went to his division to order the boarders away? 

Answer. I did not see him, but I was in a situation to see him only a part of 
the time ; then he was not at his quarters. 

Question by the same. Was Lieutenant Cox a boarder? 

Answer. My impression is that he was not. 

Question by Lieutenant Cox's counsel, proposed by the judge advocate to Lieu- 
tenant Budd, on his cross-examination. At the time of the conversation which 
you have stated to have had with Lieutenant Cox in Halifax, did not he state as 
a part of the same conversation, that Captain Lawrence, after he was wounded, 
requested his assistance in carrying him below ? 

Answer. No. 

Question by the same. Did Lieutenant Cox say at the same time that Captain 
Lawrence was displeased with him as an individual, or displeased on account 
of the issue of the engagement? 

Answer. I understood that Lieutenant Cox's intention was to state, that Cap- 
tain Lawrence was displeased because he left his quarters to carry him below 
when a man would have answered as well; but I have no other means of form- 
ing a judgment than by Lieutenant Cox having uttered the precise words to 
which I have already testified. 

Question by the same. Did not Lieutenant Cox say that Captain Lawrence 



400 COURT MARTIAL. [1814. 

requested him to return on deck after he had left him below, and fight the ship 
till she sunk? and were not these the precise words in which Mr. Cox said he 
was ordered to return to his quarters by Captain Lawrence ? 

Answer. No ! 

Question by the same. When did Lieutenant Cox join the Chesapeake? 

Answer. A few days before she commenced her cruise. 

Question. Had Lieutenant Cox ever been mustered at the second division, 
and if so, how many times 1 

Answer. I do not know whether he was ever mustered at the second division. 

Question by the court. After you had beat to quarters did you see at any time 
Lieutenant Cox in the command of the second division 1 

Answer. After we beat to quarters, I saw Lieutenant Cox in command of the 
second division, which I knew to be his quarters. 

The court adjourned, the morrow being Sunday, to meet on Monday morning 
at ten o'clock. 

April 18th, 1814. The court met pursuant to adjournment. 
Present: — 

Captain Stephen Decatur, President. 
" Jacob Jones. 
Master and Comd. James Biddle. 

Lieut. Wm. Carter, Jr. 
" John T. Shubrick. 
" Benj'n W. Booth. 
" Alex'r Claxton. 
" David Conner. 
" John Gallagher. 
" John D. Sloat. 
" Matthew C. Perry. 

THOMAS 0. SELFRIDGE, ESQ., Judge Advocate. 

Acting Midshipman Benfn Tollett was produced as a witness on the part of 
the prosecution. Being duly sworn in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox 
on the charges aforesaid. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 
1st of June, 1813, and if so, in what capacity] 

Answer. I was attached to her as acting midshipman. 

Question by the same. In what part of the ship were you stationed in her action 
with the Shannon? 

Answer. In the third division on the gun-deck. 

Question by the same. Where was Lieutenant Cox's station in the action 
between the Chesapeake and Shannon? 

Answer. He had charge of the second division. 

Question by the same. Did he remain with his division during the whole of the 
engagement, and if not, when did he leave it? 

Answer. I did not see him immediately before the action, nor when it com- 
menced, but after Mr. Ludlow called the boarders through the after hatchway I saw 
Mr. Cox bringing down Captain Lawrence. I also saw Lieutenant Cox remove 
the grating off the steerage hatchway and descend from the gun-deck with Cap- 



CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 401 

tain Lawrence. I did not hear Captain Lawrence speak to Mr. Cox, and I did not 
see Mr. Cox again until after the ship was carried. At the time I saw Lieute- 
nant Cox carrying Captain Lawrence below, many of the men in the second 
division were standing at their quarters; whether all of them were standing 
at their quarters, or whether part of them had gone to the spar-deck, I do not 
know. 

Question by the court. Was there sufficient time after Mr. Ludlow called the 
boarders, for Lieutenant Cox to have gone from his division to the spar-deck 
and brought down Captain Lawrence? 

Answer. I think there was time sufficient. 

Question by the same. Was there anything in Lieutenant Cox's deportment at 
the time you saw him, evincive of fear] 

Answer. I do not think that his appearance evinced fear in the least. 

Question by the court. Did anyone assist in conveying Captain Lawrence 
below? 

Answer. There were more persons than one aiding Lieutenant Cox. I do 
not know who they were. 

Question by Mr. Cox's counsel proposed through the judge advocate. Was not 
your back turned upon the steerage hatchway so that a person might easily have 
passed up without your notice, and how long did you stand near the steerage 
hatchway! 

Answer. A person might have passed up the steerage hatchway soon after 
Mr. Cox went down, without my seeing him; I remained at my quarters in the 
third division, several minutes after Mr. Cox went down. 

Question by the same. Did you not see Lieutenant Cox doing duty in your 
division after Mr. Ballard was wounded and carried below, and after Mr. Cox's 
division had been deserted by the men ? 

Answer. No. 

Question by the same. Could the guns of the second division have been brought 
to bear upon the enemy, after you saw Mr. Cox with Captain Lawrence ? 

Answer. No. 

Midshipman Delozier Higginbol ham, being duly sworn, was produced as a wit- 
ness for the prosecution on the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, on the charges 
aforesaid. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 
1st of June, 1813, and if so. in what capacity, and where stationed? 

Answer. I was attached to her in the capacity of midshipman, and was sta- 
tioned at the second division on the gun-deck in the action with the Shannon. 

Question by the same. Where was Lieutenant Cox's station in said action ? 

Answer. He had charge of the second division. He behaved well throughout 
the action. He animated and cheered the men as long as the guns of his divi- 
sion could be brought to bear. He left his division before Mr. Curtiss came to 
call the boarders; at which time, I being a boarder, attempted to gain the spar- 
deck, by the main hatchway and was driven back by the enemy's marines ; 
when I attempted to gain it by the fore-scuttle, at which time I found the Chesa- 
peake's men jumping below. The men on the gun-deck having deserted their 
quarters were crowding down the fore-hatchway. Mr. Cox came forward to me 
from the after part of the ship with his cutlass in his hand, and said, "You 
damned cowardly sons of bitches, what are you jumping below for?" Witness 

34* 



402 COURT MARTIAL. [1814. 

asked Mr. Cox if he should cut them down? Mr. Cox answered, " No sir, it is 
of no use." I went forward and found Lieutenant Budd, wounded, who requested 
me to show him the way to the cockpit, which I accordingly did, and I did not 
see Mr. Cox afterwards. 

Question by the court. How many men were on the gun-deck at the time you 
asked Mr. Cox whether you should cut the men down ? 

Answer. As many as thirty or forty, who had not gone but were going below. 

Question by the same. Were any of the men on the gun-deck, armed, and if 
any, what number ? 

Answer. About ten had arms, and the rest none, that I saw. 

Question by the court. Did Lieutenant Cox attempt to rally the men on the 
gun-deck ; or those who were jumping there from the forecastle'? 

Answer. Nothing more than what I have above related. 

Question by judge advocate. After Mr. Cox directed you not to cut the men 
down, how many men came from the spar deck through the fore-scuttle 1 

Answer. I should judge about fifteen. 

Question by counsel for Mr. Cox. Was not Mr. Cox, preparatory to the engage- 
ment, mustered at the second division for the first time ; and could he know which 
of the men were boarders, and which not? 

Answer. He was then mustered there for the first time. 

Question by the same. At any time during the action did Mr. Cox avoid danger, 
or discover symptoms of fear ? 

Answer. Not to my knowledge. 

Question by the same. Might not Mr. Cox have heard Mr. Ludlow's call for 
the boarders, he being nearer to the after hatchway than you ; and you not have 
heard it? 

Answer. Mr. Cox was nearer the after hatchway than the witness, and might 
have heard Mr. Ludlow's call. Witness did not. 

Question by the same. Did not the men precipitate themselves down the hatch- 
way in a mass, so that they could not be stopped, if they were cut down, and 
was there any ladder to the hatchway? 

Answer. There was no ladder to the hatchway; the men were in a mass, but 
I do not know that cutting down one would not have stopped the rest. 

Midshipman James Curtiss, having been duly sworn, was produced as a wit- 
ness for the prosecution, in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, on the 
charges aforesaid. 

Question by judge advocate. On the 1st of June, 1813, were you attached to the 
Chesapeake, if so, in what capacity, and where stationed? 

Answer. I was attached to the Chesapeake as a midshipman, and stationed 
on the quarter-deck as aid to Captain Lawrence. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the engagement? 

Answer. After the ships were foul, Captain Lawrence ordered the boarders 
to be called. When the bugleman failed, I jumped below and informed the 
officer on the starboard side of the deck, whom I supposed had the command of 
the second division, that the boarders were called ; whether Mr. Cox or not, I 
cannot say ; I then passed forward to the first division and informed Mr. Budd, 
and then returned to the spar deck by the fore-scuttle ; Captain Lawrence then 
had been carried below. There remained on the spar deck of the Chesapeake, 
twenty or thirty men, as nearly as I can judge, and the enemy, forty or fifty 



CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 403 

strong, were in possession of the quarter-deck, and had advanced nearly as far 
forward as the gangway. I believe there was some fighting at this time on the 
larboard side forward. At this time I saw no commissioned officer on the spar- 
deck, and I believe that some of the Chesapeake's men were not armed. After 
the ship was carried, I saw Mr. Cox in the steerage. 

Question by the court. You state that the officer whom you saw in the second 
division was on the starboard side of the gun-deck; which was the side off from 
the enemy ; were the men of the second division also on the starboard side ? 

Answer. Several of the men were on the starboard side; the men were scat- 
tered about, not attached to their guns, having left them. 

Question by the court. What interval of time elapsed between the Chesa- 
peake's being carried, and your seeing Mr. Cox in the steerage? 

Answer. According to the best of my recollection, ten minutes. 

Question by the court. When you went below to call the boarders, did you see 
any of the men stationed upon the gun-deck going below ? 

Answer. I do not recollect that I did. 

Question for Mr. Cox, by his counsel. Was Mr. Cox in the steerage before you, 
or did he come there afterwards? 

Answer. I do not know. 

Question by the same. When you supposed you saw a lieutenant on the 
starboard side, corrfmanding the second division, did you not also see Mr. Hig- 
ginbotham, and was he not upon the larboard side ? 

Answer. Mr. Higginbotham was at this time upon the larboard side. 

Question by the same. Could the guns of the second division, at this time 
have been brought to bear upon the enemy? 

Answer. I believe not. 

Dr. John Dix, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness for the prosecution, 
in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, upon the charges aforesaid. 

Question by judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 1st 
June, 1813, as surgeon's mate? 

Answer. Yes. 

Question by the court. Did you see Captain Lawrence carried into the cock- 
pit, and who carried him ? 

Answer. I saw him after he passed the stanchions at the foot of the stairs, but 
I do not know who carried him down ; I did not see Mr. Cox during the action. 

Question by the same. Was your attendance upon Captain Lawrence imme- 
diate upon his being carried into the cockpit, and did you hear him give any 
orders, and if he had have given orders, should you have heard them? 

Answer. My attendance upon Captain Lawrence was immediate. Dr. Edgar 
was supporting him, when he inquired for his aids, who were not present. He 
then ordered me to go to the deck and teix the men to fire faster, and 
not give up the ship, which I attempted to do, but was prevented by the enemy's 
fire upon the berth deck. Had he have given any other orders, I think I should 
have heard them. 

The court adjourned to meet to-morrow at 10 A. M. 



404 COURT MARTIAL. [1814. 

19/h April, 1814. The court met pursuant to adjournment. 
Present: — 

Captain Stephen Decatur, President. 
" Jacob Jones, 
Master and Comd. James Biddle, 

Lieutenant William Carter, Jr., 
" John T. Shubrick, 
" Benjamin W. Booth, 
" Alexander Claxton, 
" David Conner, 
" John Gallagher, 
" John D. Sloat, 
" Matthew C. Perrt. 
THOMAS OLIVER SELFRIDGE, ESQ., Judge Advocate. 

Dr. Richard C. Edgar, having been duly sworn, was produced as a witness 
for the prosecution in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, upon the charges 
aforesaid, when Lieutenant Cox filed the following objection to the competency 
of Dr. Edgar as a witness, viz : 

" Lieutenant Cox objects to the examination of Dr. Edgar, or any witness, on 
the part of the prosecution, other than those contained in the list of witnesses 
which has been already handed to him by the judge advocate, as it would be 
inconsistent with the established usage of a court-martial. 

(Signed) " WILLIAM S. COX." 

Whereupon the court was cleared to deliherate, when the objection was over- 
ruled and the witness ordered to be examined. 

Lieutenant Cox was informed by the court that he should be allowed ample 
time to meet the evidence, if he should require it, before the court would call 
upon him for his defence. 

Question by judge advocate. Were you surgeon of the Chesapeake 1st June, 
1813? 

Answer. I was. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the action with the 
Shannon ? 

Answer. I did not see him. 

Question by the same. Who brought Captain Lawrence to the cockpit? 

Answer. Two persons brought him down, but the lights in the steerage were 
so dim that I could not see who they were, and the stairs to the cockpit were very 
crowded. 

Question by the same. Did Captain Lawrence give any orders to the persons 
who brought him down ? 

Answer. Not in my hearing, and I was present. 

Question by the same. Did he give any orders in your hearing after he was 
carried into the cockpit 1 

Answer. He gave me an order to go on deck and tell the commanding officer 
to fight the ship till she sunk; he immediately countermanded the order and 
directed me to send the loblolly boy with the same order. 

Question by the court. Did the persons who brought down Captain Lawrence 
aid you in getting him into the cockpit? 

Answer. One of them did; who he was I do not know; the other did not 
aid me, and I do not know who he was nor where he went. 



CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 405 

Midshipman Edmund Russell, having been duly sworn, was produced as a 
witness for the prosecution, on the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, upon the 
charges aforesaid. 

Question by judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake 1st June, 
1813, in what capacity, and where stationed ? 

Answer. I was attached to her in the capacity of a midshipman, and was 
stationed at the third division on the gun-deck. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the engagement 
with the Shannon? 

Ansiver. I did. After Captain Lawrence was carried down, he came to the 
thirteenth gun, where I was stationed, and where there were but few men, and 
helped depress and fire it ; that and the gun aft being the only guns in the bat- 
tery which would bear on the enemy. This was the last gun fired. Lieutenant 
Cox then went away. I remained at my quarters a short time, and, perceiving 
the men gone from the first and second divisions, I went forward, where I saw 
Lieutenant Budd wounded, and the men on the gun-deck jumping below, and 
the men on the spar-deck jumping down. In about three minutes from the time 
Lieutenant Cox left my gun he came forward, but used no endeavours to rally 
the men or prevent their going below. According to the best of my knowledge 
could the men have been stopped when I first looked forward, the number upon 
the gun and spar-decks would have been sixty. The boarders had swords and 
some of them pistols, but great complaint was made of the badness of the pis- 
tols, and that the balls did not fit. Mr. Higginbotham went below with Lieute- 
nant Budd, and when he came up he asked Mr. Cox whether he should cut 
the men down who were going below, and he answered "No sir, it will be of 
no use." About twenty men came from the spar-deck after this. At this time 
Lieutenant Cox was looking down the hatchway, and there were no men on the 
gun-deck. 

Question by the court. If there were no men on the gun-deck, why did Mr. 
Higginbotham request of Lieutenant Cox, permission to "cut the men down J" 

Answer. He requested permission to cut the men down who were coming 
from the spar deck. 

Question by the same. Did Mr. Cox, Mr. Higginbotham or yourself, when you 
saw there were no men on the gun-deck, make any effort to gain the spar-deck? 

Answer. We did not. Mr. Budd, when he came down, observed that the ship 
was carried, but this was not in the hearing of Mr. Cox. 

Question by judge advocate. Was there any attempt made by Mr. Cox to put 
the grating upon the hatchway ? 

Answer. None that I saw, and it was not put on. 

Question by Lieutenant Cox's counsel. When Lieutenant Cox assisted at your 
gun, had not Lieutenant Ballard, the commanding officer of the division, been 
carried below? 

Answer. He had been. 

Question by the same. Did the enemy take immediate possession of the gun- 
deck after Mr. Cox's answer to Mr. Higginbotham, and could the Chesapeake's 
men have been stopped, if cut down ? 

Answer. They took possession a few moments after. I do not think the men 
could have been stopped. We remained upon the gun-deck sometime, when 
the enemy came down and ordered us off; I went, but did not see Mr. Cox. 



406 COURT MARTIAL. [1814. 

Question by the same. Would any attempt to rally the men on the gun-deck 
af that time have been successful ; or were there any men there to be rallied ] 

Answer. There were none to rally on the gun-deck. 

Question by the same. Were there any gratings near the fore-hatchway on the 
gun-deck ] 

Answer. None that I saw. 

Question by the same. Did Mr. Cox avoid danger, or exhibit any symptoms of 
fear during the action] 

Answer. He did not avoid danger, nor discover any symptoms of fear to my 
knowledge. 

Midshipman William Steele, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness 
for the prosecution, in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, on the charges 
aforesaid. 

Question by judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 1st 
June, 1813, in what capacity, and where stationed 1 

Answer. I was attached to her in the capacity of midshipman, and was sta- 
tioned on the berth-deck. 

Question by the same. Did you see Mr. Cox during the action with the Shannon 1 

Answer. I did not. I saw Captain Lawrence carried down ; but who was 
with him, I don't know. 

Question by the court. When did you first see Mr. Cox, after the engagement'? 

Answer. After the action, a British officer called for the surviving commanding 
officer of the Chesapeake, when Mr. Cox came to the hatchway ; at this time all 
the surviving officers were in the steerage. 

Midshipman John D. Fisher, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness for 
the prosecution, in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, upon the charges 
aforesaid. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 
1st June, 1813, in what capacity, and where stationed ] 

Answer. I was attached to her as a midshipman, and stationed on the fore- 
castle. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the engagement 
with the Shannon] 

Answer. I did not. 

The court adjourned to meet to-morrow at 10 o'clock. 

20th April, 1814. The court met pursuant to adjournment. 
Present : — 

Captain Stephen Decatur, President. 
" Jacob Jones. 
Master and Comd. James Biddle. 

Lieut. Wm. Carter, Jr. 
" John T. Shdbrick. 
" Benj'n W. Booth. 
" Alex. Claxton. 
" David Conner. 
" John Gallagher. 
" John D. Sloat. 
" Matthew C. Perrt. 

THOMAS OLIVER SELFRIDGE, ESQ., Judge Advocate. 



"CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 407 

Midshipman Horatio Bates, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness for 
the prosecution, in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, upon the charges 
aforesaid. 

Question by the judge advocate. On the 1st of June, 1813, were you attached 
to the Chesapeake; in what capacity; and where stationed? 

Answer. I was attached to her in the capacity of midshipman, and was sta- 
tioned at the third division on the gun-deck. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the engagement 
with the Shannon? 

Answer. I did see him in the engagement, and soon after the action com- 
menced, in the command of the second division upon the gun-deck. When he 
left that station I do not know, but just before the cannonading was discontinued, 
and after I had carried Mr. Ballard to the after-hatchway, and when I was re- 
turning to my division, I saw Lieutenant Cox with others, aiding in carrying 
Captain Lawrence below ; and I saw Mr. Cox step over the combings of the 
hatchway. At the time I saw Captain Lawrence in the arms of Lieutenant Cox 
and others, the men in the second division were not at their guns. As my gun, 
which was the aft one, was disabled, I went to the 13th gun, which was the last 
fired, but did not aid in firing it. Shortly after this, in about three seconds, I 
was informed that the boarders were called, by a singing out upon the gun-deck 
" boarders away." I immediately attempted to gain the spar-deck to aid in re- 
pelling boarders, but could not succeed. At this time there were but few men 
on the gun-deck, and they were running below. I did not see Mr. Cox after I 
saw him step over the combings of the hatchway during the action. 

Question by the court. Was the 13th gun of the third division fired after you 
left it; and if it had been fired after, were you in a situation to have known it? 

Answer. It was fired about the time that I left it. It is my belief that this 
was the last gun, as I remained on the gun-deck, and I heard no report of a gun 
after that. 

Question by the same. Did you leave the same persons at the 13th gun, whom 
you found at it ? 

Answer. I did. 

Question by the same. Did you see any officer at or near the 13th gun at the 
time you returned? 

Answer. I saw acting Midshipman Follet between 12th and 13th guns, and I 
saw no other officer. 

Question by the same. Is it not possible that an officer or officers might have 
been at the 13th gun, working it, and you not have seen them. 

Answer. An officer or officers might have been there and I not have seen 
them. 

Question by the judge advocate. Was it possible for Lieutenant Cox, after your 
return, when you saw him stepping over the combings of the hatchway, to have 
passed to the 13th gun without your having seen him; and if he had gone to the 
cockpit, was there sufficient time for him to have descended and returned before 
the gun was fired? 

Answer. It was possible for Lieutenant Cox to have passed to the 13th gun 
without my having seen him, but if he did go to the cockpit, it is my belief that 
he could not have gone down and returned before the gun was fired. 

Midshipman Benjamin Tollett called again for the prosecution. 



ft 

408 COURT MARTIAL. [1S14. 

Question by the court. Were you in a situation to observe who were working 
the 13th gun after you saw Captain Lawrence passed below ? 

Answer. My station was at the 11th gun, which was the first of the third di- 
vision;! perceived that men were working that gun, but who they were, I cannot 
tell. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you between the 12th and 13th guns, at 
any time during the action ? 

Answer. I was not. 

Samuel Livermore, Esq., being duly sworn, was produced as a witness for the 
prosecution in the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox on the aforesaid charges. 

Question by the judge advocate. Were you attached to the Chesapeake on the 
1st of June, 1813, and if so, in what capacity, and where stationed? 

Answer. I was on board of her as a volunteer; I was rated as chaplain, and 
was stationed on the quarter-deck. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Cox during the engagement of 
the Chesapeake and Shannon ? 

Answer. No. 

Question by the same. What voluntary declarations has Lieutenant Cox made 
to you, or in your hearing, of the circumstances which took place in the action 
with the Shannon, relative to himself! 

Answer. After our arrival in Halifax, I heard Mr. Cox voluntarily declare in 
presence of some of the officers of the Chesapeake, but whom, I cannot recol- 
lect, that when he heard the boarders called, he went up and found Captain 
Lawrence wounded, and assisted in carrying him below. I have no recollection 
that he stated that he returned to the spar-deck, or attempted so to do, except that 
he informed me he was crowded down by the boarders of the enemy. 

Question by Mr. Cox. Did not Lieut. Cox, in the course of that conversation, 
say that he assisted Captain Lawrence, in carrying him below, at his own 
request? 

Answer. Not to my recollection. 

Question by the same. Did you ever hear Captain Lawrence mention the 
conduct of Lieutenant Cox, during the action, in terms of disapprobation? 

Answer. No. After the action I was confined in Mr. Ludlow's state-room 
till we arrived in Halifax, and I had no conversation with Captain Lawrence. 

Question by judge advocate. When Mr. Cox stated to you, or in your hearing, 
that he was crowded down by the enemy's boarders, did he designate the place 
from which he was crowded, or at what period in the action it took place ? 

Answer. Not to my recollection. 

The evidence for the prosecution was here closed. Whereupon Lieutenant 
Cox requested the court to grant him three days to enable him to procure evi- 
dence and prepare his defence, which was granted by the court. 

The court adjourned to meet to-morrow at 10 o'clock. 

The court having been occupied with other business from April 20th to April 
26th, 1814, and Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry having been excused, the court 
proceeded in hearing the defence of Lieutenant William S. Cox upon the 
charges aforesaid. 

26th April, 1814. 

Midshipman John D. Fisher, being duly sworn, who was produced as a wit- 



CHAP. XL] COURT MARTIAL. 409 

ness for the prosecution on the trial of Lieutenant William S. Cox, was now- 
called by Lieutenant Cox and examined by his counsel. 

Question by Lieutenant Cox's counsel. Did not Lieutenant Budd, at the call 
for boarders, gain the upper deck by the fore-scuttle ] 

Answer. At the second call for boarders, I saw Lieutenant Budd gain the 
spar-deck by the fore-scuttle, and he said " Boarders away," and immediately 
ran aft upon the starboard side, and I followed him. 

Question by the court. Did you see Mr. Curtiss come up by the forecastle 
when he went down to call the boarders! 

Answer. I did not see Mr. Curtiss when he came up. 

Question by the same. After you saw Mr. Budd go aft, did not Mr. Curtiss go 
forward to haul on board the fore-tack ] 

Answer. Mr. Curtiss came forward with orders to haul on board the fore-tack, 
two or three minutes before Mr. Budd gained the spar-deck by the fore-scuttle, 
after which I did not see Mr. Curtiss go forward, and no orders to that effect 
were sent forward by any person to my knowledge after Mr. Budd came up by 
the fore-scuttle. 

Question by the same. Did Mr. Budd appear to be wounded when he came up 
by the fore-scuttle ] 

Answer. No. 

William Gardner, seaman, being duly sworn, was produced as a witness by 
Lieutenant William S. Cox, in his trial on the charges aforesaid. 

Question by prisoner's counsel. On the 1st June, 1813, were you on board the 
Chesapeake, in what capacity, and where quartered, in the action with the 
Shannon] 

Answer. I was on board the Chesapeake in the capacity of seaman, and was 
quartered in the second division on the gun-deck, and was captain of gun No. 
8, in said division. 

Question by the same. At the first call for boarders which reached your divi- 
sion, did Mr. Cox go immediately to the spar-deck by the main hatchway, and 
did you follow him? 

Answer. He did go and I followed him. 

Question by the same. Who gave the first call for boarders which reached 
your division ] 

Answer. Lieutenant Ludlow, from the spar-deck, at the main-hatchway, and 
Mr. Cox immediately called away his division. 

Question by the same. Did you see Lieutenant Budd at your division at any 
time during the engagement] 

Answer. No. 

Question by the court. Were you a boarder ? 

Answer. I was a first boarder. 

Question by judge advocate. When you first went up after Lieutenant Cox, 
what number of the enemy were on the quarter-deck of the Chesapeake ] 

Answer. Twelve or fourteen, and others coming on the larboard quarter. 

Question by the same. How many Americans were there upon the quarter- 
deck of the Chesapeake when you came up after Mr. Cox] 

Answer. In my opinion there were as many as forty or fifty men. 

Question by the same. Did you see any men upon the gangway or forecastle] 

Answer. Some in both places, but how many I do not know. 

vol. i. — 35 



410 



COURT MARTIAL. [APRIL, 1814. 



Question by the same. Did you see Captain Lawrence when you came up, 
and where was he standing 1 

Answer. I did see him leaning on the binnacle, on the starboard side, and he 
was wounded. 

Question by the same. Did you hear him give any orders after you came up 1 

Answer. I did, but the noise and confusion were so great that I do not know 
what they were. 

Question by the same. When Mr. Cox came up, where did he go, what orders 
did he give, $&d what did he dol 

Answer. jR soon as he came off the ladder he ordered the boarders to " rush 
on," and went aft himself. I did not see him again, and I do not know what els'e 
he did. 

Question by the same. How long was it after you gained the upper deck, be- 
fore you were disabled"? 

Answer. A few minutes, as near as I can judge, from five to ten. 

Question by the same. Had Lieutenant Cox, when he went aft, remained upon 
the quarter-deck, either fighting or giving orders, should you not have seen or 
heard him before you were disabled 1 

Answer. There were so much noise and confusion on the quarter-deck, that 
I could not distinguish one man's voice from another, and I did not see him. 



DEFENCE. 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Court Martial: — 

The unfortunate issue of the engagement between the Chesapeake and the 
Shannon, has given rise to many prejudiced opinions among some, and has 
excited a great solicitude among others, to ascertain the immediate causes of 
that misfortune; for the belief has been strong, that the event of an inquiry 
would clear from all disgrace the American naval character, and vindicate from 
reproach the conduct of the American officers who suffered and shared the mor- 
tification of that defeat. Confident, as I am, that this will be the result, I am far 
from declining a scrutiny, however minute, which I trust will place me beyond 
the possibility of suspicion. If, from these fair and honourable motives, which 
coincide precisely with my wishes, I am arraigned before you, I have reason to 
be gratified. But if the object be to heal the wounded honour, or reinstate the 
naval pride of the nation by offering me a sacrifice, I lament that some kind 
shot, commissioned for my death, had not saved to your feelings and to mine 
the necessity of this meeting. If, because I have survived, and found no fault 
with others, I am to bear the odium of the defeat, I cannot but consider the pro- 
secution as ungenerous; for, if the public feelings have been wounded at all, 
mine have been more so. But a constitutional freedom from suspicion inclines 
me to adopt the more charitable presumption and urges me to embrace with 
eagerness this opportunity of claiming your attention to the conclusive proofs of 
my innocence. 

Many accusations are brought against me; but for the sake of brevity and 
method, I venture to include them under the general charges of cowardice and 
neglect of duty. For desertion from quarters, disobedience of orders, and the 
specifications, charged under the head of unofficer-like conduct, are only differ- 



CHAP. XL] COX'S DEFENCE. 4H 

ent instances of the same neglect. Many of the charges are repetitions, and the 
same conduct is laid in different places, with a little variation of language, as a 
distinct offence. This is sufficiently obvious upon a cursory reading; but this 
is not all; the charges are contradictory. I say this not merely to point your 
attention to the fact, but to take an opportunity of reminding you of the nume- 
rous instances, in which, by these very means, innocence has been providentially 
rescued from the deep malice of a false accuser. The specifications under the 
second charge state, that I was seen by my commanding officer, James Law- 
rence, Esq., in the cockpit, and by him ordered to return; while the first specifi- 
cation under the 4th charge states, that I accompanied the person of my disabled 
commander to the gun-deck, and there continued. 

I am charged with cowardice, in deserting my quarters. The testimony of 
every witness who had the means of knowledge has been, that I remained at my 
quarters at least until Lieutenant Ludlow made the first call for boarders. This 
was heard by some and not by others. The cry of " Boarders away" is, to a young 
officer, an animating cry; and whether the accused heard Lieutenant Ludlow, 
or received the first information from Mr. Curtiss, it is certain that he heard the 
order before it reached Mr. Budd. The testimony of this last gentleman con- 
sists partly of his own knowledge, and partly of my conversation with him at 
Halifax. The substance of. the first is this; that when he passed from his own 
division to the main hatchway, after the action had lasted ten or twelve minutes, 
he did not see me there, though he looked round with that view, and that he did 
not afterwards see me on the upper deck. If my division was filled with men, 
it would have been difficult for him (in his haste to head the boarders), to have 
seen me. If it was deserted, my duty required my presence elsewhere. And why 
should Mr. Budd have been anxious to find me! Was it to leave his own divi- 
sion in my charge? That would have been as much a desertion of my station, 
as any of which I am accused. Was it that he suspected my fidelity as an offi- 
cer! I had but just joined the frigate, and, if in former service my character 
had been beyond suspicion, I trust that in this short acquaintance I had given 
him no reason of distrust. The call for boarders he must have supposed had 
reached me, before it arrived at him. Why then delay an instant in a fruitless 
search for me! The remainder of his testimony consists of a recital of my own 
declarations at Halifax; and here I may be permitted to remark that though the 
voluntary confession of a person accused, made after the accusation, and when 
he knows the use that will be made of his declarations, is the highest evidence 
against him, yet the occasional imperfect and unguarded conversations of a man, 
who has no suspicion that he is to be arrested, are of an entirely different charac- 
ter. In the one instance, appropriate and precise language is carefully used; in 
the other, thoughtless and mutilated expressions are constantly escaping. Such 
discourse with my companions. at Halifax was common and without reserve. 
There were other witnesses also that were not called upon by the prosecution, 
and could not be by myself, who could testify to entire conversations, in which 
the reason for my conduct was stated, and yet that one, who is found upon the 
record of the court of inquiry to have stated the conversation in a manner the 
least favourable to me, is called on, and the others not. Besides, am I first to 
be convicted of such extreme folly, as to confess away my character as an offi- 
cer, in an enemy's country, and that not to a stranger, but to one, on whose 
report I should be reputed a coward? If such idiocy has marked my conduct, 



412 COX'S DEFENCE. [APRIL, 1814. 

I am safe ; for I am legally incapable of committing a crime. It must have been, 
either that a full statement was not made by me at the time, or that it was not 
fully understood and recollected. The declaration is stated to have been, that I 
assisted in conveying Captain Lawrence to the cockpit. If carrying him part of 
the way, and delivering him into the hands of others, before he reached the 
cockpit, be, as it undoubtedly is, to assist in conveying, I was correctly understood. 
Doctor Dix did not see me there. Doctor Edgar who came to the head of the 
ladder, did not see me. Mr. Steel, who was at the steerage when Captain Law- 
rence was carried down, did not see me; nor was I seen by the men who 
crowded the ladder as they carried down the others, who were wounded; yet I 
was seen and known after this by others on the gun-deck. That, after coming 
from the spar-deck with Captain Lawrence, in stepping over the combings of 
the steerage hatch and stooping to accommodate my burthen, Mr. Follett may 
have lost me for a moment is probable; but he accounts for it himself. That 
Captain Lawrence was angry is equally true, but it is hoped that the inference 
drawn by the witness, that he was angry with me, because a sailor might have 
rendered him the same service, is different from the inference which will be 
drawn by the court. Well may I join in the general grief at the death of that 
naval hero, whose testimony, if he were alive, would refute this charge. I knew 
Captain Lawrence intimately and knew him as a man. I had, as the court 
know, sailed with him before, in the Argus, and Hornet. In the service of my 
country, I had never sailed under any other commander. He recommended me 
to promotion, and it was through his means, and the opinion he entertained of 
my merit, that I obtained my rank and commission as lieutenant. My regard 
for him was reciprocated, and I was proud of it, and I assisted him, in this in- 
stance, from feelings of gratitude, which, long and habitually exercised towards 
him, had become powerful and rapid as instinct. I assisted him, too (as I claim), 
at his own request, and I afterwards bewailed his death with tears. Was this 
cowardice, or disobedience of orders'! Was the man on whom Nelson leaned, 
when he was wounded, and who kissed him when he died, a coward, or a de- 
serter from his duty] or was it said that a sailor would have done as well? To 
follow the bent of amiable feelings cannot be inconsistent with the character of 
an officer, or a breach of the Articles of War. If a common sailor could have 
done as well, have you ascertained that a common sailor was to be found? 

I am charged with cowardice, and yet to support another charge, it is neces- 
sary to resort to a specification which contradicts it, for it is there said that I 
quitted my quarters and repaired to the upper-deck. This was no skulking 
place for a coward, and had the event of the contest been different, many of 
these acts with which I am charged, would have enhanced my merit in the pub- 
lic estimation. 

You are satisfied, gentlemen, that I was no coward. My guns had ceased to 
bear: and my men took the opportunity of deserting instead of following me, as 
I flew at the call for the boarders, to the spar-deck. 

The other charges against me amount in some shape or other to neglect of 
duty ,■ as that I was seen in the cockpit and there received orders which I did 
not execute. That Captain Lawrence saw me there, or gave me either there or 
elsewhere, any orders, at any time, which I did not zealously endeavour to exe- 
cute, or that I have committed any such fault, as is alleged in the specification 



CHAP. XL] COX'S DEFENCE. 4J3 

under the 2d charge, has not been proved, is not true, and is directly contra- 
dicted by the whole testimony before the court. 

I imagine such a state of facts as I insist the testimony proves. An officer 
who has just gained the ship, is mustered at his division for the first time pre- 
paratory to an engagement, where the faces and particular duties of the several 
men are unknown to him. The list of names which is furnished him cannot 
enable him to distinguish persons; for if they were all strangers, he could not 
refer these names to the individuals around him, or to the characters or capaci- 
ties in which they acted. At the call for boarders, a considerable number leave 
his division with him, whom he at first innocently mistakes for boarders. The 
men themselves know better; the sympathy of terror is contagious; the division 
is deserted, and the officer is astonished to see the men precipitate themselves 
below in a mass, without attempting to accompany him to the upper-deck, to 
which it is said to be unofficer-like conduct in him, thus circumstanced, to repair. 
It would be no desertion of duty to go where his duty called him, nor could it be 
a crime to leave his quarters if his duty required it. What then was his duty 1 
Was it to remain a fixture by the side of a deserted, disabled cannon that could 
not be brought to bear upon the enemy; the nominal commander of an empty or 
a useless division ! or was it, to repair to a place where there were fighting men 
engaged, and where information for his immediate conduct might be obtained. 
What he did from a sense of duty and the impulse of the moment, he trusts 
your deliberate judgment will approve. Some of the testimony is said to be 
introduced to show that if there had been more officers and men on the spar- 
deck, the ship would not have been carried; and yet I am censured for having 
repaired to the spar-deck at all, even when the guns of my division could not be 
brought to bear. 

It may be asked, why, after assisting Captain Lawrence below, I did not return 
to the spar-deck 1 

If one of the specifications be true, that Captain Lawrence ordered me to my 
division, it is answered enough. But if this charge is abandoned, the conclusive 
answer to the inquiry is, it was impossible, for no man it is believed after this 
period, gained the spar-deck from below. I say that I was repelled in my at- 
tempts, as the rest state themselves to have been, and if it is asked where is the 
evidence of the fact, I reply, that there is no evidence of the witnesses having 
been repelled, except the testimony of each man as it relates to himself. The 
cannonading lasted ten or twelve minutes, and the whole time of the action 
did not exceed fifteen. Besides, I was" busied about many things," and my 
constant endeavours were well directed, and not entirely fruitless. Some of the 
witnesses endeavour now to mark the lapse of time between particular transac- 
tions by minutes and seconds. A much more certain way, however, to effect this 
purpose is, to ascertain what were the immediate events which took place in 
the quickest succession. To mark the rapidity of the transaction, you will re- 
member that I had been on deck, carried Captain Lawrence below, as far as the 
steerage ladder, gone to one of the two guns that remained serviceable in the 
battery, assisted in training and firing the last gun and passed forward, by the 
time that Mr. Higginbotham was coming aft from an unsuccessful attempt to 
gain the spar-deck, though he made the attempt as soon as the call for boarders 
reached him. 

But I refused to an officer the use of coercive means. The impetuosity of a 

35* 



414 SENTENCE. [APRIL, 1814. 

young officer was restrained by what! — the cowardice or bad conduct of the 
accused ! No, he coolly replied, and with deep regret, " 'tis of no use." He was 
neither rash nor cruel. The number of his own slain wanted no unnecessary 
addition, and with the full possession of his judgment he formed an opinion, the 
correctness of which, when he said sorrowing " 'tis of no use," he still maintains. 
In telling the accused the event of that battle was disastrous, you tell him no 
news. It tortured his feelings at the time, it torments him now; and has repeat- 
edly been the theme of melancholy reflection ; and when accident or design re- 
calls to his memory these vain regrets, he administers to his own wounded feel- 
ings the same sad consolation which he addresses to Mr. Higginbotham, " 'tis 
of no use." 

He did not rally men where there were none to be rallied, nor stop the men 
who were falling down the hatch when the gratings were lost, and there 
were no means to prevent them; but he animated them by his example, which 
was intrepid, and his conduct, which was firm, and reproached them with his 
voice. He did not save the ship, nor could he, but his endeavours to preserve 
her and capture the enemy, will acquit him of all blame in the loss of her. 

Many inquiries may be made which it is difficult to anticipate. Curiosity, 
excited by an imperfect statement, and events may suggest, after a misfortune 
has happened, many ingenious ways in which it might have been avoided, and 
expedients and improvements in the conduct of individuals, which, had they 
occurred in season, would have been of great service. You may be able, after 
this long deliberation, to discover instances in which the accused might have 
shown more judgment in the application of his exertions. So, perhaps, at this 
time, can he; but if his judgment was not the best, it was his misfortune, not 
his fault. 

My whole conduct, I trust, has not disgraced the commission which I have 
the honour to bear in the naval service of my country. I am no coward, no 
deserter, not chargeable with neglect of duty, or disobedience of orders. I 
deny every charge, and assert my claims to the unsullied reputation of an 
officer, a man of honour and a gentleman. My sword since my arrest has been 
in the keeping of honourable hands, and is still fit for service in the same cause, 
where it has once failed of victory. May better success attend it for the future. 

My anxiety during my trial must have been great, notwithstanding my inno- 
cence; but the patient investigation, by the court, of that series of transactions 
which I had the greatest interest and strongest solicitude to make public, 
has constantly sustained a mind of conscious integrity, with the animating 
earnest of an honourable acquittal. 

The court being ordered to be cleared, and the whole proceedings read to the 
court by the judge advocate, the following sentence was pronounced. 



SENTENCE. 

The court, after mature deliberation on the evidence adduced, find the prisoner, 
Lieutenant William S. Cox, "not guilty" of the charges, first, "of cowardice," 
second, " for disobedience of orders," exhibited against him. Of the third charge 
for "desertion from his quarters and neglect of duty," the court find the prisoner 
"not guilty" of desertion from his quarters, but "guilty of neglect of duty" in 



CHAP. XL] THE NAVY. 415 

not doing his utmost to aid in capturing the Shannon, by animating and encour- 
aging, in his own example, the inferior officers and men to fight courageously, 
and in denying the use of coercive means to prevent the desertion of the men 
from their quarters, and in not compelling those who had deserted from their 
quarters to return to their duty. Of the fourth charge, " for unofficer-like con- 
duct," the court find the prisoner "guilty," in that, while the enemy was board- 
ing, or attempting to board, the frigate Chesapeake, the prisoner accompanied 
his disabled commander, James Lawrence, Esq., from the quarter deck, where 
his presence and command were essential to animate and direct the Chesapeake's 
crew in repelling the boarders of the enemy; and sentence him to be cashiered, 
with a perpetual incapacity to serve in the Navy of the United States. 

STEPHEN DECATUR, President. 

Thomas 0. Selfridge, Judge Advocate. 

Approved, JAMES MADISON. 

The great influence of the naval victories on public sentiment 
did not decline, but was corroborated by the adversity of their 
interruption in the capture of the Chesapeake. Induced by the 
successes of the summer and autumn of 1812, the twelfth Con- 
gress, soon after they met for the last time, authorized, in Janu- 
ary, 1813, four ships of the line and six frigates to be built, and 
in March, six sloops of war with as many armed vessels on the 
lakes as the public service might require. Frigates called the 
Guerriere and Java, sloops the Frolic, the Peacock, and the 
Wasp, were built with the promptitude of American shipwrights, 
whose work, even when they are foreigners naturalized in the 
United States, is finished, like the voyages of American vessels, 
with a rapidity unknown in Europe. It is subject of regret 
that those names of vessels have not been kept up. Such tro- 
phies should never be relinquished or forgotten. The frigate 
Constellation which took the first (French) frigate under the Ame- 
rican flag, the frigate Constitution, her English prizes, the frigates 
Guerriere and Java, the sloops of war Frolic and Peacock, and 
the brig Boxer, should be perpetuated in the nomenclature of 
an American navy. 

The acts of Congress for an extensive marine, especially 
the last indefinite authorization for that on the lakes, gave 
evidence of the change and progress of public sentiment re- 
specting a navy, which till then had never been altogether a 
national institution. The loss of the Chesapeake contributed 
to expel the party and other prejudice which still remained. 



4X6 QUINCY'S RESOLUTIONS. [JUNE, 1813. 

The House of Representatives, which declared war, rejected a 
bill appropriating $100,000 to the captors of the Guerriere, by a 
vote of 59 to 54 : most of the federalists who opposed the war, 
voting for, and most of the republican or war party, voting 
against, the grant. In the last expiring moments of that session, 
however, on the 3d March, IS 13, when measures become acts of 
Congress by the midnight legerdemain, which then contrives 
their enactment, appropriations were effected for half that sum, 
viz : $50,000 for the capture of the Guerriere, together with 
$50,000 dollars for the capture of the Java, and $25,000 for the 
capture of the Frolic. But the sense of Congress was not tested 
as on the 1st February, by open votes and speeches on the 
subject, nor opposition overcome by deliberate proceedings, 
showing that the navy had then got the better of its American as 
well as of its English enemies, or that even the war party was 
reconciled to it. Yet national sentiment was rapidly rising far, 
as usual, beyond congressional liberality. Nearly universal 
popular good-will, even emulous among opposite parties, wel- 
comed the naval victories for which Congress allowed inade- 
quate and almost stolen rewards, while sympathy as general 
deplored the first great naval misfortune. In the midst of these 
general indications of national satisfaction, succeeded by mourn- 
ing as universal, an outrage on, not merely patriotic but natural 
feelings, attempted in the legislature of Massachusetts, sitting 
at Boston, soon after the Chesapeake sailed from that port to 
encounter the Shannon, provoked the final extinction of all 
that remained in the United States of infidelity to a naval esta- 
blishment, by indignation at the sectional heresy in New England, 
which was reprobated everywhere else. On the 15th June, 1S13, 
Mr. Josiah Quiucy, in the senate of Massachusetts, moved the 
following preamble and resolutions, which were adopted : — 

" Whereas a proposition has been made to this senate for the 
adoption of sundry resolutions, expressive of their sense of the 
gallantry and good conduct exhibited by Captain James Law- 
rence, commander of the United States ship of war Hornet, and 
the officers and crew of that ship, in the destruction of his ma- 
jesty's ship of war Peacock : and, whereas it has been found 
that former resolutions of this kind, passed on similar occasions 
relative to other officers engaged in a like service, have given 
great discontent to many of the good people of this common- 



CHAP. XL] QUINCY'S RESOLUTIONS. 4J7 

wealth, it being considered by them as an encouragement and 
excitement to the continuance of the present unjust, unnecessary, 
and iniquitous war; and, on that account the senate of Massa- 
chusetts have deemed it their duty to refrain from acting on the 
said proposition : and, also, whereas this determination of the 
senate may, without explanation, be misconstrued into an inten- 
tional slight of Captain Lawrence, and denial of his particular 
merits ; the senate, therefore, deem it their duty to declare that 
they have a high sense of the naval skill and military and civil 
virtues of Captain James Lawrence ; and that they have been 
withheld from acting on said propositions solely from considera- 
tions relative to the nature and principles of the present war. 
And to the end that all misrepresentations on this subject may 
be obviated, 

"Resolved, as the sense of the senate of Massachusetts, that, 
in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and 
prosecuted in a manner that indicates that conquest and ambi- 
tion are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious 
people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits 
which are not immediately connected with the defence of our 
seacoast and soil." 

Such authoritative disloyalty disgusted and provoked patriotic 
reaction, far beyond the power of argument, among advocates 
of war, theretofore opponents of the navy. Conviction rapidly 
and widely spread by sympathy stronger than reason, that the 
navy was political attraction, as well as belligerent vindication. 
The representatives of rural districts, by whose votes war was 
declared for free trade and sailors' rights, needing some strong 
revulsion to subdue local prejudices and convert them to an 
expensive national institution, in which farmers and planters 
seemed to have no ostensible interest or advantage, rallied to the 
support of the abused marine asserters of American rights, tra- 
duced by partisans who made common cause with the enemy. 
Indignation against those stigmatized as little better than traitors, 
confirmed a growing admiration for naval achievement, and put 
an end to all opposition to the navy, except that denounced and 
counteracted as infamous and revolting. The naval aversion and 
parsimonious retention of the twelfth Congress, even among such 
members of it as were also members of the thirteenth Congress, 
disappeared at our first session, when the deplorable fate of 



418 NAVY. [JUNE, 1813. 

the gallant Lawrence, aggravated by Qaincy's resolutions, had 
great effect. The republican or rural party adopted the navy as 
they did the war, slowly and reluctantly, but surely, urged and 
goaded by ungenerous opposition and English aggression. Dis- 
appointed on the land, but relieved from the sea, unlooked-for 
naval triumphs began republican reconciliation to the navy, which 
was confirmed by an odious faction maligning its victories, and 
refusing to condole with its greatest defeat. We have lost a frigate, 
said Bainbridge's official letter, of the 8th June, 1813, to the Sec- 
retary of the Navy, but no reputation. Should the enemy impute 
it to superior skill or bravery, they must give more than one 
solitary instance to convince us. Such was the argument he and 
Stewart used to the president a year before against laying up the 
navy. And it had become a national sentiment. A thousand 
Chesapeakes taken by as many Shannons would not quell the spirit 
which the naval events of a twelvemonth had inspired. When 
the thirteenth Congress came together, therefore, not a word 
was uttered, much less votes journalized, against rewarding, sup- 
porting, and extending the navy. On the 12th June, 1813, the 
Naval committee reported a bill to the House of Representatives, 
as soon as the capture of the Chesapeake was known at Wash- 
ington, appropriating $25,000 to Lawrence, his officers and crew 
for the capture of the Peacock ; which bill, with an amendment 
adding $12,000 to Elliot and his companions for their two prizes 
on Lake Erie in October, 1812, was passed without opposition 
on the 22d of that month, the anniversary of the first capture 
of the Chesapeake in 1S07. These appropriations were nearly 
simultaneous with Mr. Quincy's resolutions, which provoked by 
wholesome reaction their unquestioned enactment. Feelings, 
stronger than reason, the voice of the people, the instinct of im- 
pulsive patriotism, wrought conviction in nearly every American 
breast, that our agricultural is also a maritime country. When 
Perry shifted his flag with "Don't give up the ship," upon it, 
from a dismantled but unconquered ship, called the Lawrence, on 
Lake Erie, deep in the far west, the militia of western Pennsyl- 
vania and Ohio, who supplied the numbers of his imperfect crew, 
felt, without pondering, that a navy was part of American inde- 
pendence. When Tecumseh in the wilds of Alabama roused that 
primitive population, the mountaineers of Tennessee, who never 
saw a ship, and hardly ever heard of a sailor, to repel the invasion 



CHAP. XL] NAVY. 419 

of the lords of the ocean, with infuriated savages and revolted 
slaves, come from the seacoast to despoil their rustic homes, they 
too felt, without waiting to think, that their cause was that of the 
mariners of New England. A revolutionary sympathy electrified 
the American nation for victors like Hull, and victims like Law- 
rence. Delighted with naval victories, deploring naval misfor- 
tune, disgusted with those who delighted in what good Ameri- 
cans deplored, and deplored what they delighted in, "Don't give 
tip the ship," and "fire faster" became watchwords in the 
woods and prairies, and on the lakes of the far west, as on the 
waves of the Atlantic and Pacific. 

Nowhere was this national enthusiasm more heartfelt than in 
the good people of New England — those who from Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire carry their invincible and 
intelligent enterprise to the shores of Lake Superior and the banks 
of the Gulf of Mexico. Their patriotic sympathies were with 
the Union, and the war, with the glory and progress of the great 
republican empire, which many of their most educated, wealthy, 
and devout strove to confine within limits as narrow as their own 
short-sighted vision of national grandeur, and intolerant English 
notion of individual freedom. In another year the people of Bos- 
ton prevented those infatuated promoters of revolt from surren- 
dering the frigate Constitution, together with the ship of the line 
upon the stocks there, the corner-stone and national concession of 
the maritime extension from which New England was to derive 
the greatest advantages. What they termed the populace of Bos- 
ton prevented their superiors, as certainly they should have been, 
from surrendering those ships to the English threatening to burn 
them in their navy yard, when governors and divines were hatch- 
ing the Hartford Convention, that last extremity of passive trea- 
son, whose scheme to withhold the war taxes might have dis- 
membered the Union by the final expedient of desperate disaf- 
fection. Naval success, and victories by land far from them, at 
length crushed their designs, more ruinous to their contrivers 
than even infamous. In spite of their malignity a navy became, 
by universal adoption, the shield and sword of the United States, 
and like the south-western territories, which Massachusetts re- 
jected, the great bond of American national union. Local and 
parsimonious republicanism which held back from the navy, 
adopted it under the pressure of transatlantic aggression, and 



420 LAWRENCE. [1813. 

reaction against American treachery. The Senate of Massa- 
chusetts, by voting Quincy's resolution, unwittingly helped to 
render the navy an institution of a republican confederacy, which 
from the Aroostook to Chicago, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico 
by the war of 1812 repelled transatlantic aggression. 

In another respect, professional as well as national benefits 
arose from Lawrence's sacrifice. Triumphs transcendent, and 
unexpected, intoxicated national confidence, and disarmed naval 
prudence. Vain-glorious assurance, almost contempt for the 
much dreaded enemy, took place of that considerate valour 
from which discretion can never be rejected with impunity. No 
enemy can be despised. Mr. Irving and Mr. Cooper, with other 
accounts of the engagement between the Chesapeake and the 
Shannon, dwell on the unprepared and disorderly condition of 
the American frigate, and the misgivings with which her com- 
mander went to battle. But was he not misled by the mistaken 
confidence that he could take an English frigate in a quarter of an 
hour as he took a sloop? Many of his countrymen still believe 
he had done so when his ship got foul of the other, and that 
mere accident then, as it often does, reversed the scale of victory. 
If Captain Lawrence had received Commodore Brock's manly 
challenge before sailing, or if he had been less hasty in closing 
with him, the contest might have been more equal than it was, 
when Lawrence rushed upon every disadvantage with a brave, 
cautious and well-prepared foe, whose much more complete 
preparation did him honour. 

That the English navy did not consider that solitary victory 
a final settlement of the question of naval superiority was appa- 
rent throughout the rest of the war, when rarely, if ever, did they 
engage an American vessel without some advantage. In Janu- 
ary, 1814, it was made known to Commodore Decatur, that 
Commodore Hardy, commanding the squadron blockading the 
American squadron at New London, had yielded to the desire 
of two of his captains, Hope of the Endymion frigate, and Stack- 
pole of the Statira, to meet the frigates United States, Captain 
Decatur, and Macedonian Captain Jones ; but that the English 
commodore did not like to take the responsibility of giving the 
challenge, though he said he would permit the combat. Decatur 
immediately sent Captain Biddle with the challenge, which was 



CHAP. XL] DECATUR. 42J 

left by the English commodore to the determination of his two 
captains, who, after considering, declined it. The Endymion 
mounted more guns than the United States, and the Statira more 
than the Macedonian. Decatur proposed to meet them as they 
were, or man and arm the ships exactly alike, man for man and 
gun for gun. Perhaps no large inferences could be drawn from 
the challenge on the one part, or declining it on the other, as 
various points of official responsibility, as well as personal and 
national honour, enter into the management of such affairs. The 
disaffected American press on that occasion, opened its animad- 
versions on Decatur, and bestowed commendation on the English 
commander. But it was replied, that what was called fighting 
a match, was less hazardous and as honourable with equal force, 
as cruizing over distant seas for a long time in search of such 
encounter. The national advantages would be the same from 
victory : the glory of the flag, the conquest of the enemy, the con- 
fidence that begets further enterprise, favourable impression on 
mankind, and eventually peace and happiness. If it could be so, 
it would be an amelioration of naval warfare, to refer the result 
to single combat, which in war between the United States and 
Great Britain, might save treasure and blood to both, in the rela- 
tive strength of the two navies, with great advantage to this 
country. 

Two months after the capture of the Chesapeake, in the same 
neighbourhood, the ascendant of American naval victories was 
restored in the triumphant death of another gallant seaman. The 
schooner Enterprize, commanded by Lieutenant William Bur- 
rowes, sailing from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the 1st Sep- 
tember, 1813, was encountered by the English brig Boxer, at 
least her equal in size, weight, and armament, commanded by 
Captain Blythe, a bold, brave Englishman, prepared to take the 
Enterprize as the Chesapeake had been taken ; who went into 
action with colours streaming from all his spars, and his flag 
nailed to the mast. After a sharp contest, in which both com- 
manders were killed, the English vessel was compelled to beg 
for quarter from her conqueror, for the flag could not be struck 
as it was nailed to the mast, while the American guns continued 
to fire. The Boxer was taken a prize into Portsmouth, by 
Lieutenant McCall,who succeeded Burro wes in command of the 
Enterprize : and Burrowes and Blythe were there buried toge- 
vol. i. — 36 



422 ENTERPRIZE AND BOXER. [SEPT., 1813. 

ther with the honours both merited. Burrowes died heroically, 
refusing to leave the deck after being mortally wounded, like 
Pike and Lawrence, expiring on the hard but imperishable bed 
of honour. Ten days after that, Perry's victory on Lake Erie 
completed our revival from a momentary pang of naval depres- 
sion. There, too, the English colours, nailed to the mast, were 
taken down by American captors. 

The Enterprize and Boxer were small vessels, and their en- 
gagement therefore not as striking as that between the Chesa- 
peake and Shannon frigates. But in no instance was the supe- 
riority of American broadsides, nautical skill, and personal 
courage, better signalized. The Boxer was armed, manned, 
fitted, and prepared at Halifax, with a chosen crew and officers, 
like the Shannon, to test the question of national naval pre-emi- 
nence. Taken into Portsmouth, the English brig was a much 
more remarkable token of success than the American frigate 
taken into Halifax. Her hull, masts, rigging, and sails, were 
studded with round and grape shot, more than ten to one in the 
Boxer than the Enterprize. Disingenuous efforts were made, 
as usual, by the federal newspapers in that quarter, particularly 
at Newburyport and Boston, to undervalue the victory; which 
induced Captain Hull, commanding that station, to examine and 
certify the truth. Captain Gordon, of the English vessel Rattler, 
sent by a flag of truce to ask for his seamen taken in the Boxer; 
and beyond all doubt, the victory, small as it was in the size of 
the combatants, was a trial of strength, prepared for in- Halifax, 
without notice to the conqueror. 

At the same time solace from England came across the Atlan- 
tic in bursts of extravagant exultation for the capture of the 
Chesapeake, for which the Tower guns were fired as if a fleet 
had been taken, and national joy so unmeasured broke loose 
as to show how deep the despondency must have been before 
what proved but short-lived resiliency. On the passage of the 
Frolic from the Downs to Portsmouth, having made her number 
to the Niobe, Captain Montague, a ship in attendance on the 
Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William the Fourth, amus- 
ing himself at Brighton, as soon as he understood it was the 
Frolic, which had been captured by the American sloop of war 
Wasp, the duke expressed a wish to go on board of her, which 
he did, and held a levee, at which the officers were introduced to 



CHAP. XI.] BRIG ARGUS. 423 

his royal highness, who complimented them on their native 
gallantry. Among other instances of ludicrous apology, a Lon- 
don newspaper published that the American victories were owing 
to their cartridges being made of lead, so that the shot, instead 
of being enclosed in canvas, were cased in a material which 
accounted for the destructive fire of their broadsides. The secret 
had been made known to the commissioners of the admiralty 
by a lieutenant, who was to have been promoted for it. With 
such royal courtship were officers cajoled, and with such news- 
paper fables were seamen alarmed, to explain disasters attributa- 
ble to the capacity of mariners, more free and better disciplined 
than their European antagonists, by a combination of greater 
liberty with greater law than the English navy ever could boast. 

Sailing from New York in June, 1813, to carry Mr. Crawford, 
the American minister, to France, after landing him there, the brig 
Argus, Captain William H. Allen, next month performed an ad- 
venturouscruise in the British Channel, where she capturedtwenty 
merchant vessels and caused great alarm to the commerce of En- 
.gland. In the narrow seas, where Admiral St. Vincent insisted that 
a British treaty with the United States should require recognition 
of Great Britain's exclusive mastery, that little vessel unfurled the 
American flag upon a cruise, the conception of which required 
genius, whose successful execution would have been one of the 
most splendid exploits of seafaring courage, and whose disastrous 
close brought no dishonour on the brave enterprize. The En- 
glish reverence which then pervaded the seaboard of this coun- 
try, magnifying English maritime power, was well rebuked by 
the Argus on the English coast, contrasted with the total want 
of British naval enterprize at the same time, with considerable 
fleets failing to make any serious impression in the Chesapeake, 
the Delaware and wherever else it was attempted in our waters. 
We were taught that distant and maritime power is apt to 
be overrated, especially by this country of that. One of the 
American officers who was near being condemned, by diffi- 
dence of the American navy, to remain with it as a harbour 
defence in New York, a calm and calculating seaman, considers 
that city in no more danger from English assault, than great 
English cities from American. 

On the 13th August, 1813, the Argus captured a vessel loaded 
with wine, of which it was said too free use was made by the 



424 NAVAL WARFARE. [AUG., 1813. 

American crew. Soon after which her flag was, not ingloriously, 
struck, after an engagement with the English brig of war Peli- 
can, Captain Maples. The Pelican measured 485 tons, the 
Argus 298; the British vessel mounted eighteen 32 pounders, 
the Argus sixteen 24 pounders. The Argus, under all these 
disadvantages, was nobly fought in St. George's Channel, and 
did not strike till her case was hopeless. Captain Allen was 
mortally wounded, his first lieutenant Watson disabled, and 
the vessel, then commanded by Captain Allen's younger brother, 
was desperately defended till further resistance was impossible. 

Besides the Shannon, Belle Poule, and Tenedos off Boston, 
Commodore Hardy's squadron blockading Decatur's at New 
London, Beresford in the Poictiers ship of the line, with a frigate 
and some smaller vessels, in the Delaware, whose attempt on 
Lewistown has been before mentioned, Admirals Warren and 
Cockburne, with a large fleet in the Chesapeake, beginning with 
paltry depredations, afterwards defeated at Craney island, and 
in several attempts to get possession of, or burn the Constellation, 
disgraced by slight success with Beckwith's land forces at Hamp- 
ton, and an alarm they gave Congress at Washington, the naval 
efforts of Great Britain on the American seaboard continued in- 
significant throughout the year 1813. Whenever war with Eng- 
land is the theme, our assailable places and seaports are con- 
signed to fancied destruction. The British press, and sometimes 
Parliament, fulminate slave insurrections, Indian incursions, lake 
and Atlantic invasions, most of which are imagined likewise by 
portions of the United States. But such was not the experience 
of the late war, which was mostly merely predatory on their 
part, and expensive rather than otherwise injurious to us. In the 
Delaware and Chesapeake small warfare was continually waging 
throughout 1813, with various success, the might always against 
us, our shore repulsion often deficient in vigour, and mostly in 
skill. Still, of the much deprecated horrors of war, the suffering 
was more imaginary and costly than real or durable ; and should 
teach confidence for any such future occasion. It would be easy 
to fill pages with stories of these little marauds : but their 
details have no historical interest except as affording national 
instruction for preparation, moral and material, for any other 
such troubles. 

Long and unmolested cruises during the whole year 1813 of 



CHAP. XI.] AMERICAN CRUIZERS. 425 

the frigates President, Captain Rodgers, the Congress, Captain 
Smith, the Essex, Captain Porter, and other vessels of war, tra- 
versing nearly every sea, making many captures, and encoun- 
tering no enemies able to capture them, demonstrated that the 
ubiquity and immensity of British naval powers are, in good 
measure, illusive. In April, the President and the Congress put 
to sea from Boston, separated, and performed extensive cruises 
alone, seeking for English vessels. In July, the Essex proceeded 
on her memorable cruise in the Pacific Ocean, hereafter to be 
described. By the time Congress met in December we had 
accounts from Captain Porter that he had captured, manned, and 
armed nine large English vessels, worth two millions of dollars, 
and was commodore of a fleet of his own creation, in which, 
among other singular naval occurrences, his chaplain served, to 
supply the want of navigators, as a prize master. The President 
and the Congress returned into our ports, refitted, and sailed again, 
as if there were no British ships to countenance proclamations 
of their blockade. Rodgers sailed in December, 1813, from 
Newport, not only without interruption from the enemy's 
squadron, off New London, but of a clear moonlight night, and, 
as was believed, preceded by a traitor shallop which gave notice 
of his departure. But, as was said in the maritime confidence 
which the navy had then established, the fast-anchored ships of 
the fast-anchored isle of Great Britain, were no match for the 
vigilant and daring seamen of America. 

The cruises and captures of these frigates were complained 
of in Parliament and more loudly by the English press. While 
large French fleets, completely armed, equipped, and ready for 
sea, with Dutch and Italian sailors, suffered blockade, often, as 
Melville declared in the House of Lords, by British force inferior 
to their own, a few American frigates not only traversed the 
ocean without interruption, but defied the English marine, and 
distressed the commerce under its charge. Rodgers captured 
off Newfoundland, a small English vessel of war, the High- 
flyer, from which he got the private signals (as the enemy 
captured ours in the frigate Chesapeake), together with circular 
orders from Admiral Warren, to every English ship, to capture, 
if possible, the frigate President. When it was known in En- 
gland that she had watered at North Bergen, several squadrons 
were dispatched in pursuit of her ; the Royal Oak and Seahorse, 

36* 



426 SEA LOSSES BY WAR. [AUG., 1813. 

under Lord A. Beauclerk, the Superb, Menelaus, and Fly, under 
Captain Paget, and several frigates sent by Admiral Young from 
his fleet. 

At the same time the American privateers were active and 
successful ; so much so, that more particular accounts of their 
performances is reserved for another chapter. Altogether, 
throughout the year 1813, proofs multiplied that on the ocean 
Great Britain was neither omnipotent nor invulnerable. Even 
the merchant voyages of the United States were not put a stop 
to. Without reckoning the large illicit trade from New England 
to Halifax, by which it was said 17,000 barrels of flour were 
entered in one day at that port from the United States, cotton 
and other staples of this country were exported in profitable 
adventures to France, Spain, and elsewhere. The tabular state- 
ments of treasury receipts and expenditures annexed to my fifth 
chapter, page 256, show that the impost, of the United States was 
not extinguished by all the alleged might of the vast navy of Great 
Britain. American commercial losses by war did not excessively 
surpass those which, before its declaration, were caused to 
American commerce by English seizures and sequestrations, 
together with French unlawful depredations. Blockades, deten- 
tions, admiralty and other charges and impositions, cost the mer- 
chants of the United States nearly as much as war, by losses at 
sea. It is true that the greater expenses of war were to be added 
to this estimate of its cost. But ever since Franklin and Jefferson 
brought from Europe that just horror of war's wanton abomi- 
nations which became the politics of this country, till the crisis 
when a resort to it was at last forced from Congress, exag- 
gerated impressions prevailed in the United States, and were fo- 
mented by colonial reverence for England, of the effects of war, 
which facts and reason do not justify. The income of the United 
States from customs in 1813, was $13,224,623 25; whereas, in 
1S09, it but little exceeded seven, and in 1810, eight millions of 
dollars. In 1813 it was about the same, one year after the war, 
that it was in 1811, one year before. The commerce of the 
United States was not driven from the ocean by war. Far from 
it. If Mr. Gallatin had given his experience and talents to 
the treasury department, instead of bestowing them upon first, 
an attempt to prevent the navy from going to sea, and then 
going to Europe himself to importune peace by other than war 



CHAP. XL] LAKE CHAMPLAIN. 427 

measures, or if the American government had not been deterred 
by British influence from cultivating the commerce and naval 
co-operation it might have arranged with France, the fiscal bur- 
thens of the war of 1812 would have been much less, and its 
military achievements have sooner tended to the only legitimate 
object of war — safe and permanent peace. 

Of the lake warfare in 1813, that on Lake Erie has been 
already mentioned. Perry's victory with a fleet, like Hull's 
with a frigate, the first success of the kind, was of inestimable 
advantage in breaking the British charm of naval ascendant, 
and proving that even when out-numbered, our mariners would 
seldom be overcome. The fleet combat on Lake Champlain 
is part of the events of next year. On the 9th of September, 
1813, the young commander there, Thomas MacDonough, offi- 
cially informed the Secretary of the Navy, that our officers in 
his sloop, the President, had in vain endeavoured to bring the 
enemy to action, who declined it, and stood off with his squadron 
to the north, acknowledging either American mastery on that 
lake, or English unwillingness to test it without further ship- 
building, of which the costly race soon began there that was pro- 
secuting on Lake Ontario, and next day, the 10th of that month, 
terminated by Perry's victory on Lake Erie. 

About the same time, the remains of Lawrence, and his first 
Lieutenant Ludlow, transported from Halifax in a flag of truce 
to New York, were buried there with suitable ceremonies and 
universal sympathy. Captain Blythe, of the Boxer, who bore a 
pall at Lawrence's interment in Halifax, was shortly before the 
latter's burial at New York, consigned to the grave with Bur- 
rowes, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The disingenuous offi- 
cial statements by which Captain Carden tried to veil his capture 
in the Macedonian, the social adulation by which Dacres was 
welcomed when a prisoner in Boston, and generally the haughty 
bearing of English naval officers, together with the despicable 
obsequiousness of too many Americans, mutually subsided into 
reciprocal feelings of naval and national respect. The few naval 
engagements could not, indeed, expel the British marine from the 
ocean, or even prevent its mastery there. But they served to 
convince both the United States and Great Britain, as Bainbridge 
said of the solitary capture of the Chesapeake, that many more 
proofs of superiority must be given before the English navy 



428 LAKE ONTARIO. [SEPT., 1813. 

would be allowed exclusive possession of the seas. The issue 
there, as on the lakes, was changed to a mere question of num- 
bers, the power of moral or accredited superiority being trans- 
ferred from the English to the American flag. 

On Lake Ontario the contest was protracted, expensive and 
undecided by any such victory as to settle the ascendant. Till 
September it was a contest of ship building. From the 6th to 
the 11th of that month, however, while Perry was conquering 
Barclay on Lake Erie, Chauncey was chasing Yeo's fleet, in most 
respects superior to his, until at last so far successful, as to bring 
Yeo to a running action on the 28th of September, of no important 
result, beyond conviction on both sides, that the dominion of the 
waves was no longer British. Chauncey, with his ship the Pike, 
the only one of the American fleet that could sail as fast as those 
of the enemy, except her small attendant, the Governor Tomp- 
kins, gallantly commanded by Lieutenant Finch, now Captain 
Bolton, brought Yeo to battle in his ship the Wolfe, which was 
much cut up. The English commodore was fortunate enough 
to escape, however, his ignoble retreat being bravely covered 
by Captain Mulcaster in the Royal George, who threw his ship 
between his own commander and ours, and took the latter's fire. 
Chauncey's seamanship and intrepidity on that occasion were 
much applauded. But from his first mistake that spring, when 
he carried Dearborn to the attack on York in April, instead of 
Kingston, as Dearborn's orders and Armstrong's plan required, to 
Chauncey's last misapprehension, by which he lost the greatest 
naval opportunity of the war, his career was rather a series of 
able naval evolutions, in vain attempts to bring a skilful and wary 
antagonist, to action, than anything further, after Yeo's escape by 
flight with superior forces on the 28th September, 1813. He 
took refuge with his fleet under Burlington Heights, where Chaun- 
cey might have attacked, and in all probability would have taken 
or destroyed the whole British marine on Lake Ontario. But 
he was unfortunately misinformed by the officer sent in the 
Lady of the Lake, to reconnoitre the enemy's position, who re- 
ported that Yeo with his fleet had taken refuge in Kingston. — 
The English commodore did in fact make good his retreat to 
Kingston, by passing Chauncey, misinformed, and unaware of 
his mistake. The British had batteries and land troops at Bur- 
lington Heights, for the protection of Yeo's fleet while lying there, 



CHAP. XI/| LAKE WARFARE. 429 

before they escaped into Kingston. The autumnal season was 
considerably advanced, the weather stormy and unfavourable, so 
that it would be unjust to blame Commodore Chauncey for not 
subduing his enemy, of whose position in fact he was unluckily 
misinformed. But the impression at the time was that, except- 
ing the chance in the summer of 1812, of capturing the British 
ships on the Halifax station, it was Commodore Chauncey's 
misfortune to miss much the greatest opportunity during the war 
of a naval achievement calculated to shed lustre on our arms, and 
to spread astonishment, if not consternation, among our enemies. 

It will be recollected that just at that time General Hampton 
had been repulsed in his feeble attempt to invade Canada, and 
General Wilkinson was preparing for his inglorious descent upon 
Montreal. For that purpose Chauncey had at least secured the 
command of Lake Ontario; and on the 1st October, 1813, he 
reported himself to General Wilkinson as in a condition to pro- 
tect and assist the embarkation of the army, to be carried from 
Lake Ontario, down the St. Lawrence. That unfortunate expe- 
dition was severely interrupted by Captain Mulcaster and other 
officers, and vessels sent by Commodore Yeo for that purpose. 

War never exhibited efforts so uselessly disproportionate, both 
by water and land to the prize contended for, if that was the 
command of Lake Ontario and its shores, as when large fleets 
chased each other round that little sea, land-locked by hostile 
shores, on which numerous armies, fortifications, garrisons, and 
dock-yards were either stationary or marching, during the spring, 
summer and autumn of IS 13. During all that period, on neither 
land nor water was there any considerable encounter of the hos- 
tile forces, but many months were consumed in the petty forays 
of border feuds, at vast cost of bloodshed, national character and 
popular forbearance. Sackett's Harbour and Kingston, the re- 
spective naval head-quarters, were, as might be said, almost within 
sound of the watch-word of each other's sentinels. Desertion, a 
common vice in the American army, was so frequent in the En- 
glish, that a day seldom occurred without two or three deserters 
from an English to an American station in that region. It was 
computed that in the course of that campaign, at least five hun- 
dred British soldiers deserted to the United States, as many as a 
full regiment of men, at a time when the British armies were ex- 
tremely in want of additional troops. It was said to be no small 



430 LAKE SHIP-BUILDING. [SEPT., 1813. 

part of the duty of the English soldiery, to prevent the desertion 
of the Irish, while, as will appear in the next chapter, the Gover- 
nor-General of Canada, by orders from his sovereign, was pro- 
claiming death on the gibbet to all such British born subjects, as 
should be taken, though naturalized American citizens, in arms 
against the King of Great Britain. Commodore Chauncey's last 
and greatest success, on the return from his abandonment of the 
attempt against Yeo under Burlington Heights, was the capture 
of four of the smaller vessels of the English fleet, with three 
hundred German troops and Major Grant on board of them; 
for the atrocious attempt to enforce the principle of native alle- 
giance by the gallows, which will be explained in the next 
chapter, was made by Great Britain, with armies consisting of 
the inhabitants of various German sovereignties, besides French- 
men, Spaniards, Italians, other mercenaries and vagabonds. 

The great contest of 1S13, on Lake Ontario, was that of ship 
building, conducted by Mr. Henry Eckford, an English ship- 
wright, on our port at Sackett's Harbour, with wonderful expe- 
dition, and as far as he was concerned, commendable skill and 
success. Ship after ship, the Madison and the Pike, till at last a 
very large ship of the line called the Superior, were converted with 
amazing expedition from the green forests of that region, into 
vessels of war, and manned by hundreds of seamen withdrawn 
from the ocean for that purpose. For many years after peace, 
the huge hulks of some of these vessels remained on the shores of 
that lake, monuments of the contest between Great Britain and the 
United States, to construct armaments on a lake, which contest 
it was the policy of our government to have prevented by more 
profitable expenditures in another direction. Nearly two millions 
of dollars was the sum upon which commissions were allowed 
at the treasury, and paid for ship building on Lake Ontario. — 
Captain Jones, the Secretary of the Navy, who had been a ship- 
master in the merchant service at the port of Philadelphia, a 
zealous, intelligent, and indefatigable officer, was cordially well 
disposed to wage the war vigorously. But his predilections were 
for the high seas, where he had formed them. He had no know- 
ledge of the lake service, or adequate idea of its importance. — 
Mr. Gallatin's temporary absence from the treasury, as he and 
the president insisted on deeming it, while abroad in Europe im- 
portuning peace, in addition to the many inherent disadvantages 
of that department, devolved its ad mierim and perfunctory 



CHAP. XL] LORD COCHRANE'S MOTION. 43J 

management upon Captain Jones, the Secretary of the Navy. — 
Either the navy or the treasury department at that conjuncture, 
was as much as any one man of considerable abilities could at- 
tend to. Both those departments were beyond the capacity of 
any man. Throughout the war the navy suffered for want of 
due appreciation of its vital importance as a primary function of 
the government, both at sea and on the lakes: while the trea- 
sury was derelict for more than a year after the war was declared, 
when, it being impossible any longer to believe either in Mr. 
Gallatin's return, or the success of his mission, Mr. George W. 
Campbell, of Tennessee, was at last appointed Secretary of the 
Treasury. 

In the midst of these naval proceedings upon the seas and the 
lakes, which if properly conducted must have had much greater 
effect, and neglected as the navy was, were productive never- 
theless of the happiest results, for they saved the army, the go- 
vernment, the country, and the war from discomfiture, among 
the many official notices taken of the subject in Great Britain, 
some of which have been already mentioned in this chapter, 
there was one by Lord Cochrane, in the House of Commons, 
which, more than any other, explains the philosophy of English 
naval declension, and American naval ascendancy. Lord Coch- 
rane, if I am not mistaken, now surviving as the Earl of Dun- 
donald, was an English naval officer, who, by involving himself 
with the party politics of that kingdom, fell under the proscrip- 
tive power of an intolerant executive, for the most part able, 
notwithstanding a free press, trial by jury, and many other 
bulwarks of individual liberty, to crush those who provoke its 
displeasure. He was, however, an officer whose naval exploits 
have never been surpassed, a man of the utmost intrepidity, scien- 
tific, intelligent, and full of resource, whose views of the causes 
of the unexpected successes of the American over the British navy, 
although at that time derided and rejected, have since received 
the highest acknowledgment by adoption by the British govern- 
ment. In July, 1813, Lord Cochrane submitted a series of reso- 
lutions in the House of Commons, which, though faintly by argu- 
ment, were even furiously by invective, attacked by Croker, the 
Secretary of the Admiralty. Unanswerable as the doctrine of 
these resolutions was, it was too unpalatable for the acquiescence 
which national pride and official tenacity must have made too 



432 COCHRANE'S MOTION. [JULY, 1813. 

great a sacrifice at once to yield. It is doctrine, too rational, not 
only as part of the history of that time, but the philosophy of 
government at all times, not to deserve especial remembrance. 
History, patriotism, and humanity concur to hold it up to all 
governments and nations. The cause of our lamentable defeats, 
said that experienced and able mariner, is not the enemy's supe- 
riority in skill or valour, nor the well-known difference in weight 
of metal, heretofore deemed unimportant. [Captain Carden, with 
the frigate Macedonian at Norfolk, before the war, told Captain 
Decatur that in the British service eighteen pound guns were 
preferred to twenty-four pounders, because on trial they were 
found to answer better.] The difference, said Cochrane, arises 
from the decayed and heartless state of English crews, compared 
with their energy and zeal in former wars, when they subdued 
the Dutch, the French, and Spanish; and compared on the other 
hand with the freshness and vigour of the American crews. 
Continual warfare, long confinement, monotony of life, are suffi- 
cient physical explanations of the decline of the British navy ; 
decay of body which produces despondency of mind. Impress- 
ment, service for life in actual and hateful captivity, above all, 
impossibility of promotion from common seamen to commissioned 
officers — these grievances Lord Cochrane urged as reasons why 
the navy of Great Britain was filled with superannuated, disabled, 
disheartened mariners, who had but one ruling passion, which 
was to escape from the wooden walls to which they were chained 
in hopeless durance. He suggested many ameliorations, for what 
to all of English lineage can hardly fail to appear the cause of 
the melancholy declension of a mighty marine, compared with 
that young and vigorous, however much smaller one, with 
which it was unexpectedly brought into collision, and by which 
it was triumphantly vanquished, without reference to the poor 
pretexts alleged by ignorant apologists or interested deceivers. 

In vain Mr. Croker urged with eloquence the cheering on board 
the Macedonian and the Java, proceeding, he averred, sometimes 
even from the cockpit, as evidence of the undismayed and invin- 
cible British spirit which animated the sailors. Undoubtedly 
enthusiasm is one proof of vigour, and essential to every under- 
taking, whether to gain battles, or manufacture pins. But the 
noisy stimulation Secretary Croker extolled was one of the 
very evidences of the fainting ardour of the English marine, 



CHAP. XL] NAVAL SUPERIORITY. 433 

compared with the stern, calm, orderly, and disciplined ardour 
of the American. More freedom, according to Cochrane's phi- 
losophy, was what the English wanted and Americans enjoyed. 
There was no Sabbath, no jubilee, no rest, no rejoicing for the 
wearied and exhausted mariners of England. Admiral Colling- 
wood, Nelson's second at the battle of Trafalgar, languished till 
he died of irksome confinement on a ship. Napoleon's downfall 
was accelerated and much facilitated by the lukewarmness of his 
marshals and generals, pupils fatigued with the perpetual warfare 
to which their master fell a victim. If the summits thus wither, 
what must be the decay of the roots? When the prize money 
given by Congress to the crews of the Constitution for the cap- 
ture of the Guerriere and the Constitution was distributed, those 
brave men were taken ashore, paraded at theatres, in new cloth- 
ing, regaled, complimented and gratified as the English sailor 
could never hope to be, even though his final reward by hos- 
pitals and pensions be more promising than that of the Ameri- 
can. Lord Cochrane, or any other man familiar with seafaring 
persons, indeed any one regarding the workings of humanity, 
could not fail to perceive the difference in the whole experience 
of the English and the American seamen at that period. The 
careless beings and peculiar people, whose cause Lord Cochrane 
espoused, without home on shore, without family, without prize 
money, with no other than marine recreation, without a sen- 
timent but that of mere national renown, without sympathy, 
compelled to drag out a weary existence of uninterrupted service 
at sea, galley slaves, impressed and imprisoned for life, contend- 
ing without a cause, or against it, with fresh, yet experienced 
mariners fighting for their own freedom from press gangs — how 
could the issue be other than it was ? On the other hand, the 
doubt of the American navy which would have laid it up in 
1312, was the European disparagement of America, which 
began by assigning littleness to the size of men, their growth, 
age, and manhood on this continent, inferiority of everything 
American to everything European. That European arrogance 
has been in gradual dispersion since it first began. Where man 
is better fed, housed, clothed, educated, and more independent, 
why should he not be a superior being? Liberty and law com- 
bined have enabled England to overcome other nations much 
more numerous than Great Britain. In the war of 1812 those 
vol. 1. — 37 



434 AMERICAN CAPTURES. [JULY, 1813. 

great means of national capacity were exerted for the first time 
under stress of war in the United States, when their happiest 
combination was in the American navy. 

Before the end of 1813 the British had lost by capture the fri- 
gates Guerriere, Macedonian, and Java; the sloops Alert, Frolic, 
and Duke of Gloucester, brigs Peacock, Dominica, Boxer and 
Detroit, and schooner Highflyer, with 270 guns; by sea perils in 
operations against the United States the frigates Southampton! 
and Barbadoes, the brigs Emulous, Plumper, Avenger, Falcon, 
Magnet, Moselle, and Persian, the schooners Chub and Subtle, 
with 218 guns, altogether twenty-two vessels of war captured or 
lost, with 489 guns. In that time the United States' loss amounted 
to 1 17 guns taken with seven vessels of war, the ships Chesapeake 
and Wasp, brigs Nautilus, Vixen and Viper, schooners Growler 
and Julia retaken. To these adding the fleet on Lake Erie, two 
ships, the Detroit and Queen Charlotte, brig Hunter, schooners 
Lady Prevost and Chippewa, and sloop Little Belt, six vessels 
with 60 guns, and the number of our captures was twenty-six 
war vessels with 560 guns, while theirs was seven war vessels 
with 119 guns, and two by storms, the Hamilton and Scourge, 
with 18 guns together. When Captain Yeo, in the Southampton 
frigate, took Captain Reed in the Vixen, and a storm followed, 
endangering the captor, whose men broke into the liquor room, 
got drunk and became ungovernable, as seamen sometimes do 
in emergencies of weather, Yeo appealed to Reed for help, and 
the American prisoners were mainly instrumental with their 
officers, in saving their English conquerors (by superior num- 
bers) from destruction, as publicly acknowledged by Yeo. To 
this imperfect list of comparative losses by the war, the captures 
by privateers would make a long addition, leaving the balance 
still with the Americans. British seizures before the war for 
alleged breach of blockade, colonial trade, orders in council, or 
other pretexts for depredation on American commerce, probably 
exceeded their capture from us during the war. For, as the 
president's first war message well argued, hostilities had long 
been carried on against us, which would continually increase till 
we returned them. Renovation of naval and national character 
was, however, the most important acquisition which maritime 
events gained for the United States, and in the count of cost far 
outweighs all the losses of the war. 



CHAP. XL] NAVAL COMPARISON. 435 

Great Britain had afloat in the year 1813, with no other 
enemy after April than the United States, about 1,000,000 of 
tonnage and 140,000 seamen, in her navy: 120 ships of the line, 
10 ships rating from 50 to 44 guns each, 130 frigates, 100 sloops 
of war, and more than 120 war brigs. Yet in three years of 
hostilities the frigate Chesapeake was the only American vessel 
taken by her navy from ours on anything like equal terms. Such 
disparity proves that the supposed prepotency of the English 
navy is not a well-founded apprehension. -*^_-'-' 

The American navy of 1812 was the most perfect in the 
world ; every vessel in fine order, every officer confident, yet 
prudent ; every sailor fighting for himself. It was like Crom- 
well's army of republican enthusiasts, or Bonaparte's of repub- 
lican conscripts, every soldier a patriot, every officer a hero. 
Great fleets and large armies do not better develop, if they do 
not obscure national characteristics, as fully displayed in smaller 
bodies, perhaps more so. No matter what the numbers, wherever 
perfect obedience and adequate intelligence are combined with 
patriotic enthusiasm, victory is a moral certainty, over compul- 
sory, mercenary, and dull submission. Seafaring habits are 
doubtless required for maritime success. But, as the freemen of 
England, with their broad and deep commercial foundations, 
stand firmer than the Dutch, French, or other men less free, if 
not less nautical, on the rock of marine power, the superiority 
of American mariners may be explained by the greater range of 
their adventurous voyages and the greater liberty of their habi- 
tual occupations. The great Asiatic empire of North-eastern 
Europe, the vast empire of Russia, had in 1813, fifty-three line- 
of-battle ships, thirty-four frigates, fifty-nine cutters and war- 
brigs, mounting altogether four thousand four hundred and 
twenty-eight cannons, manned by sixty thousand seamen, many 
of them expert Greeks. Would that Russian navy have been 
formidable to the navy of the United States ? in which liberty 
was a right, discipline so perfect and constant, that battle was 
recreation, order so habitual, that battle was without other noise 
than that of firearms. 

That war gave the American navy advantages which it may 
never have again : the British navy had disadvantages to con- 
tend with which it will not have in another war with this coun- 
try. The American seamen had a cause, their own cause, in 



436 NEW ENGLAND. [JULY, 1813. 

which they were animated by indignation against oppressors. 
The British seamen had no such motive. The hatred they bore 
the French, if not a rational, at any rate a national and natural 
incentive, did not exist towards the Americans. The English 
seaman fought from the habit of obedience to command; the 
American with all his heart. British naval officers, at first 
almost disarmed by contempt for their foes, even after that sen- 
timent changed to one more respectful, still could neither divest 
themselves of it entirely nor substitute for it the animosity which 
British story and British song had for ages engraved on the 
minds and hearts of both officers and men against the Dutch, the 
French, the Spanish, and the Danes. To no navy have those 
hostilities been so edifying as to the English. Nearly all Coch- 
rane's suggestions are adopted. The men, though still enlisted 
till discharged, are not impressed, probably would not be in war. 
Their rations are much improved. Their treatment is kindness. 
They get their pay whenever they land, a great advantage over 
the American service. They are, indeed, no longer acknow- 
ledged lords of the ocean : but their claim to that high title they 
may yet assert with better right than in 1812. 

More men or more ships do not make irresistible navies : but 
more practical mariners, with greater toils in lives of adventure 
by sea. Fisheries and tonnage enabled France to contend with 
England for its dominion. And in that contention North-east- 
ern America performed a conspicuous part. Wresting those 
foundations of a marine from France, Great Britain seized the 
sceptre of the ocean. Without them, Halifax for the refitment 
of her shipping, the seacoast of Nova Scotia, and fisheries of 
Newfoundland, without American naval resources, which are 
contiguous to New England, Great Britain would be impotent 
for war with the United States. By that human perversity 
which misleads the most intelligent people and defeats the most 
rational designs, the blinded sagacity of New England preferred 
what was not even passive co-operation with Great Britain in 
the war of 1812, to patriotic exertion. As far as they could, the 
American naval flag was dishonoured and the maritime develop- 
ment of New England marred. But for them, that contest 
might have vastly augmented the power of the eastern states. 
Nor was it inconsiderate passion which fettered their own limbs. 
Sordid miscalculation made the false impression that trade was 



CHAP. XL] WHALEMEN. 437 

more profitable than war ; that even illicit trade was more 
desirable than assisting their own government to enlarge all the 
avenues of trade by momentarily closing them. They may not 
confess, but they cannot but see their error. The war from 
which they held back, among other influences, taught extreme 
sectional disaffection the costly folly of its irrational indulgence. 
Such resolutions as Mr. Quincy's, such conventions as that of 
Hartford, the local and personal hallucinations of partisan excess, 
began and ended with that war, never to be repeated. It made 
an American nation and the American navy, in spite of the 
many educated, rich, and pious heretics, the respectable but infa- 
tuated of Massachusetts and Connecticut, whose factious resist- 
ance could not prevent those results ; who paid the penalty of 
exclusion from national consideration, by blindly opposing their 
own advancement. Nantucket, the cradle of American mari- 
time pre-eminence, was not only represented in Congress by a 
gentleman of the Boston infatuation ; but it was only not a 
hostile possession throughout the war, because the enemy deemed 
it disaffected to the United States, excluded from his blockades, 
and entitled to his protection. The south and the west, the whole 
Union, would have defended Nantucket in 1812, as they did 
Boston in 1775, if Nantucket had been what Boston was. But 
lamentable degeneracy had succeeded the revolutionary spirit of 
American independence. Before the disruption of America 
from Great Britain, the mariners of New England, particularly 
the whalers of Nantucket, had been celebrated by the first of 
English philosophers as the most expert seamen of the world. 
" And pray, sir," said Burke, " what in the world is equal to it ? 
Pass by the other parts and look at the manner in which the 
people of New England have of late carried on the whale 
fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains 
of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen 
recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis' Straits, whilst we are 
looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they 
have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are 
at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the 
south. Falkland island, which seemed too remote and romantic 
an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and 
a resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor 
is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accu- 

37* 









X 438 NAVAL POWER. [JULY, 1813. 

mulated winter of both poles. We know that whilst some of 
them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, 
others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along 
the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. 
No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perse- 
verance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dex- 
terous and firm sagacity of British enterprize ever carried this 
most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it 
has been pushed by this recent people ; a people who are still, 
as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone 
of manhood. When I contemplate these things ; when I know 
that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of 
ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the 
constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that 
through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been 
suffered to take her own way to perfection ; when I reflect upon 
these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I 
feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wis- 
dom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My 
rigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty." 

There, from English authority, grew the roots of American 
naval superiority, as signalized in the naval victories of 1812 
and 1813 over the great European naval masters of mankind. 
Longer and more adventurous voyages, nurseries of seamen bet- 
ter than English collieries, greater personal freedom, with more 
docility, submitting to higher discipline, and a great cause, were 
advantages which the American navy enjoyed over that of Great 
Britain. The contumelious attack on the frigate Chesapeake, 
in American waters, was the last indignity of the press-gang, 
against which vengeance was treasured up till taken, as retribu- 
tion for such wrongs is apt to be. The United States anxiously 
and humbly strove to render the peace of 1783 perpetual. Great 
Britain insisted on turning it into a treacherous truce, and a truce 
of continual tribulation for this country. Nothing was ever more 
false than George the Third's much mentioned reception of the 
first American minister John Adams, that as he had been the 
last to agree to peace with the United States, so he would be the 
last to break it. It was broken continually by his ministers from 
its signature to the declaration of war again in 1812. In that 
second war, Great Britain gave the United States a navy to cope 



CHAP. XL] NAVAL REWARDS. 439 

with hers, instead of the perpetual peace and inoffensive com- 
merce which they much preferred. With the iron, the timber, 
the cordage, the materials of ship-building, swifter ships, and 
shorter voyages, with less numerous crews, less losses from sea- 
perils — with all the materials, inducements and the spirit of 
navigation, nothing but the overweening influence of England 
in America could beget the misapprehensions of 1812. By the 
first war Great Britain forced political independence on the 
United States of America. By the second war she endowed 
them with a navy. American tonnage is running with that of 
Great Britain the race of peaceable commerce, if she will suffer 
it. If not, what has rendered Great Britain the greatest naval 
power, may enable Americans to vindicate their rights, against 
European interference. The talisman is made of Liberty with 
Law. 

While the Senate of Massachusetts resolved that it was unbe- 
coming to rejoice in American naval victories, against which 
much of the press and the pulpit fulminations of New England 
were aimed, Dacres, as a prisoner of war, was received with 
more cordial welcome at Boston than Hull, his captor, Decatur's 
squadron, blockaded at New London by Hardy's, was in danger 
of destruction by means of treasonable signals from the shore to 
the enemy, and his sentiment of loyalty to our country, right or 
wrong, was repudiated, by large numbers of respectable Ameri- 
cans, persisting in disaffected designs to defeat the war and dis- 
honour, if not abandon the navy, public sentiment throughout 
all other parts of the United States, and the will of a majority 
of the good people of New England coinciding with it, displayed 
itself in grateful and substantial acknowledgment of those victo- 
ries, showering honours upon the brave men who gained them. 
The thanks of Congress, and gold medals were, by resolutions 
of January, 1813, voted to Hull, Decatur, and Jones, also silver 
medals, to each of the commissioned officers of the Constitu- 
tion, the United States, and the Wasp, and an elegant sword 
to Elliott. The legislatures of many states, the corporations of 
cities, and various collections of citizens, bestowed upon them 
thanks, medals, services of plate, the freedom of cities, public 
entertainments, and other compliments. The naval officers were 
feted everywhere. Even citizens of Boston subscribed a public 
dinner to Hull, and the House of Representatives of Massachu- 



440 NAVAL REWARDS. [JUNE, 1813. 

setts voted thanks to him, his officers, and crew. The Order of 
Cincinnati admitted him as an honorary member. The young 
men of the Society of Friends of Philadelphia subscribed for the 
relations of those who were slain in th,e naval actions. 

All these, however, though by no means barren or even un- 
profitable honours, were not lucrative or adequate : and the 
unworthy parsimony of the twelfth Congress was not only seen 
in their at first refusing any pecuniary reward to the captors of 
the Guerriere, and afterwards when something was with diffi- 
culty got through the House of Representatives in the expiring 
moments of the session, cutting the sum down from Si 00,000 
proposed by the naval committee, to but $50,000 allowed, by 
which a niggardly precedent was set, but injustice was super- 
added to unworthy parsimony, by omitting the crews of the 
vessels from the votes of thanks, which were bestowed on the 
officers alone. These omissions and misgivings were rectified 
as the navy advanced in favour, and public sentiment proclaimed 
its title to regard. As has been already stated, the pecuniary 
allowance to Lawrence, his officers, and crew, met with no 
opposition, which was voted the 22d of June, 1813, in the 
midst of the graver labours of arranging the voluminous tax- 
bills, but also when the tidings of his memorable death were 
fresh in mind. All these grants, inadequate as they were, com- 
prehended the crews as well as the officers, upon the established 
principles of prize-money. Had the captured ships been brought 
into port, instead of being sunk at sea, the compensation to their 
captors would have been much larger. Decatur, his officers, and 
crew, received $200,000 for the frigate Macedonian, brought into 
port, by decree of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District, sitting at the city of New York. 

On the 18th of April, 1S14, the thirteenth Congress, by act, 
authorizing the purchase of the vessels captured on Lake Erie, 
(the 10th of September, 1813,) directed the president to purchase 
them as British vessels, and appropriated the sum of $255,000 in 
payment, to be distributed as prize-money among the captors 
and their heirs; by the same act allowing Captain Oliver H. 
Perry $5000 in addition to his prize-money, as commander of 
the ship Lawrence. Of the whole sum allowed, only $242,250 
appears by the treasury books to have been paid. 

It may not be amiss to add, although not transactions of the 



CHAP. XL] NAVAL REWARDS. 441 

year 1813, to this account of naval pecuniary rewards, that Cap- 
tain Biddle was paid $25,000 for the Penguin, Captain Stewart 
$25,000 for the Levant, the representatives of Captain Blakeley 
$50,000 for the Reindeer and Avon, prizes taken and destroyed 
or lost at sea ; and Captain MacDonough, his officers and crew, 
$304,292 68, for the British squadron captured on Lake Cham- 
plain. All these allowances embraced crews and officers as well 
as captains or commanders. Commodore Chauncey was paid 
$23,363 46, commissions on his expenditures on Lake Ontario; 
Commodore Perry $2000, on his expenditures on Lake Erie; 
and Commodore MacDonough $5,021 90, on his expenditures on 
Lake Champlain. 

These naval allowances were strong indications of the growing 
favour of the navy ; for none such were made to the army, or 
militia ; and all civil service, however meritorious, and protracted, 
has been constantly denied in the United States any pension, 
gratuity, or compensation, beyond the moderate salaries paid 
during incumbency of office. Martial celebrities much respected 
by mankind, are stinted by American republicanism. All titles 
are forbid by the federal constitution of 1787, which adopts in 
this respect an interdict of the confederation of 1778. Ambas- 
sadors, though named in the latter, admirals and marshals have 
never been commissioned. A lieutenant-general, or commander- 
in-chief, was proposed by a resolution submitted by Mr. William 
H. Murfree, of North Carolina, in the House of Representatives, 
and believed to have been thought of by the president, but never 
appointed. 

Donations and endowments sparingly allowed, titles absolutely 
forbid, are the theoretical conformity with the doctrine inculcated 
by Montesquieu, that virtue is a principle indispensable to repub- 
lican prosperity. Greece and Rome nourished without the feudal 
seigniorage with which the monarchies of modern Europe are 
overrun. Without permanent wealth, mere titular rank, a prin- 
cipality, dukedom, or marquisate, is as insignificant as the vulgar 
squirearchy. And wealth perpetuated by primogeniture or en- 
tails, is the law of but one country pretending to free institutions, 
where liberty exists without equality. 

No government, however, ancient or modern, no public senti- 
ment has ever overcome popular fondness for heroic achieve- 
ments. Organic rejection of titles, pensions, orders, and lucrative 



442 



WAR REWARDS, 



[JUNE, 1813. 



endowments, forces national admiration into other grants ; in this 
country the principal means of gratifying itself is by conferring 
offices, from the lowest to the highest. Naval distinction in the 
war of 1812, though not elevated, has been suggested, as a title 
to the chief magistracy of the United States. Franklin's wisdom, 
and the genius of the author of the Declaration of Independence, 
were postponed to the greater popularity of a soldier for the first 
president. The war of 1812, has already made more than one of 
Washington's successors. Natural preference of mankind for 
heroes has not been subdued by republicanism, whose rewards, 
excluded from the common channels of wealth, title or hereditary 
privilege, take sanctuary in other appropriations. Wealth must 
have attractions in all ages and countries : pedigree is not without 
them in this. But, beyond the vulgar estimate, for historical and 
enduring distinction, what are dukedoms and principalities, as 
recompense for warriors, or patents of ennoblement, compared to 
the chief magistracy of a nation? One is the cube of renown, 
of which the other is at most but the square. 



CHAP. XII.] ARMISTICE. 443 



CHAPTER XII. 

PROVISIONAL ARMISTICE, JULY, 1S12, BETWEEN BAYNES AND DEAR- 
BORN.— REJECTED BY MADISON— WHO INSISTS ON ABANDONMENT 
OF IMPRESSMENT.— AMERICAN TERMS OF PACIFICATION REJECTED 
BY ENGLAND.— ENGLISH TERMS REFUSED BY AMERICA. — CORRE- 
SPONDENCE, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 1812, BETWEEN WARREN 
AND MONROE.— WAR INEVITABLE. — AMERICAN SOLDIERS SEIZED 
AS BRITISH SUBJECTS TO BE EXECUTED AS TRAITORS.— AMERICAN 
RETALIATION. — CORRESPONDENCE ON THE SUBJECT BETWEEN 
DEARBORN, PREVOST, AND WILKINSON.— GENERAL EXCITEMENT.— 
ENORMITY OF THE ENGLISH ATTEMPT— FINALLY ABANDONED.— 
RUSSIAN MEDIATION.— GALLATIN, ADAMS, AND BAYARD APPOINTED 
ENVOYS UNDER IT.— MOREAU.— ENVOYS EMBARK FOR ST. PETERS- 
BURGH. — GALLATIN WRITES TO BARING. — BRITISH MINISTRY.— 
CASTLEREA.GH.— BRITISH DESIGNS.— SPURN MEDIATION.— OFFER TO 
TREAT AT LONDON OR GOTTENBURG. — FESTIVALS FOR RUSSIAN 
VICTORIES.— MR. OTIS'S SPEECH TO EUSTAPHIEVE, THE RUSSIAN 
CONSUL.— FESTIVALS FOR AMERICAN NAVAL VICTORIES OPPOSED.— 
GOVERNOR STRONG'S MESSAGE TO LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHU- 
SETTS.— THEIR RESPONSE. — PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT. — CAS- 
TLEREAGH'S MOTION AND SPEECH.— ALEXANDER BARING.— FOSTER 
CHARGES AMERICAN GOVERNMENT WITH FRENCH INFLUENCE.— 
BRITISH INFLUENCE IN NEW ENGLAND.— MR. WEBSTER'S RESOLU- 
TIONS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.— MR. CALHOUN'S RE- 
PORT ON THEM.— MR. MONROE'S ANSWER TO THEM. — TURREAU'S 
LETTER.— HANSON'S MOTION.— FRENCH INTERVENTION IN THE WAR 
CONSIDERED.— ITS ADVANTAGES PREVENTED BY BRITISH INFLUENCE. 
JOEL BARLOW'S NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE— MERELY COMMER- 
CIAL—FORBEARING POLITICAL CONNECTION.— BARLOW INVITED TO 
WILNA TO SIGN A TREATY— DIES IN POLAND — IS SUCCEEDED IN 
JULY, 1813, BY CRAWFORD AS MINISTER TO FRANCE.— M. SERU- 
RIER, FRENCH MINISTER AT WASHINGTON. — EMBARGO — RECOM- 
MENDED BY PRESIDENT IN JULY, THEN REJECTED BY SENATE, 
ENACTED IN DECEMBER— INEFFECTUAL— AND REPEALED. 

• 

As mentioned several times heretofore, the declaration of war 
was so nnlooked for, so incredible, that the English minister, 
Foster, a young man unfit for his station, surrounded by mem- 
bers of Congress and others, as little disposed as he to believe it, 
was taken completely by surprise. By his mistake and those 
surrounding him, England was put off her guard. Compared 



444 ARMISTICE. [JUNE, 1812. 

with her belligerent means, she was even less prepared for hosti- 
lities in this hemisphere than the United States. During the first 
six months, both governments not only desiderated peace, but 
with such mutual aversion to war, that it was faintly waged on 
both sides, except that our navy, without orders or expectation, 
struck some solitary hard blows. Our armies struck nowhere 
but to be defeated always. The president, an instrument of 
what he believed to be the will and the interest of the nation, 
was, nevertheless, anxious for peace. The Secretary of State, 
Monroe, was heard to say, we have got into the war and must 
get out of it as soon as we can. The Secretary of War, Arm- 
strong, added, what can be expected from a licentious people 
impatient of burthens ? The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
Gallatin, was unreserved in his condemnation of war, after it was 
declared as before. While such was the pacific solicitude of our 
government, that of England was just then putting forth all the 
mighty means of Great Britain in the final struggle with France ; 
in which most of her soldiers and sailors were employed, with 
an outlay of nearly five hundred millions of dollars for that one 
year ; efforts from which that great but factitious kingdom of 
many countries never has recovered, and never can. There was, 
therefore, strong indisposition for war with America, and for more 
expense. Napoleon and Alexander bid high, after involving 
Sweden, for the co-operation of Denmark, the only European 
power not engaged in the great contest ; while both desired, 
England to prevent, France to induce, the United States to take 
part in it. The British government did no more, on intelligence 
of the declaration of war by the United States, than to order an 
embargo the 31st July, 1812, for the detention of American ships, 
directing that they should be taken and detained till further 
orders. The commander of the British forces in America, con- 
scious, says an English historian (Christie), of the inferiority of 
his strength, and uncertain of reinforcement from home, adopted 
a defensive system, pursuant to directions from his government, 
which, in hopes of a speedy termination of the differences with 
America, studied, by temporizing, to avoid widening the breach, 
or exciting the American people to embark in what England 
was led to consider a quarrel undertaken by their government. 

The Governor-General of Canada was uneasy for his pro- 
vinces, which, with the good will of New England, or an ener- 



CHAP. XII.] DEARBORN'S ARMISTICE. 445 

getic and fortunate American general, even without such support, 
would have been overrun that summer. By Foster's advice 
from Halifax, Prevost dispatched his Adjutant-General, Edward 
Baynes, with a flag of truce to Flatbush, near Albany, in New 
York, where General Dearborn was stationed, to negotiate with 
him an armistice, which Dearborn was prevailed upon at once 
to subscribe. It suspended military operations till the president's 
pleasure should be ascertained; excepting General Hull's expe- 
dition : Dearborn considered that a separate command which he 
had no authority to interfere with. By this ill-advised conces- 
sion, which occurred in July, 1812, Dearborn relieved the enemy 
from all immediate fear for Canada, as far as from Montreal to 
Maiden, comprehending all the shores of Lakes Champlain and 
Ontario, with the whole St. Lawrence frontier, and enabled 
General Brock to perform his rapid march from York to Sand- 
wich, thence to force Hull to surrender at Detroit, the next month, 
August, 1812. England then had no idea that her navy could 
suffer. But she feared that her commerce would suffer from 
American privateers, her manufactures not only by losing the 
great market of this country, but by war forcing the United 
States to supply themselves with manufactures, and she feared 
the dishonour of losing Canada. Till war was declared, the 
threat of it was treated with English contempt, especially by 
the press. Peter B. Porter's report, in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, in favour of war, was ridiculed as blustering, noisy, 
silly, unstatesmanlike. Every American ship would be swept 
from the ocean, every harbour blockaded, American commerce 
ruined altogether. But as soon as war was proclaimed, it was 
discovered in London, that with 100,000 seamen, as good as 
any in the world, all of whom could be actively employed in 
public or private ships of war against British trade in every part 
of the ocean, to the very chops of the Channel, increasing rates of 
insurance, constraining merchant vessels to sail under convoy, 
America would be a troublesome and expensive enemy: a dif- 
ferent sort of enemy at sea from the French, said a London 
newspaper, with nautical knowledge and enterprize, attempting 
deeds which Frenchmen would never think of, with French and 
other continental ports to take refuge in, their depredations 
much to be dreaded. In like manner desertion of British sea- 
men was deprecated, to a service more popular and more pro- 
vol. i. — 38 



446 ENGLAND FOR PEACE. [JULY, 1812. 

fitable, if not more glorious, than their own. Dishonour in defeat 
by sea was not imagined, but expensive commercial losses. More- 
over British manufactures would suffer. War would be a hot bed 
for those of the United States to be forced forward with the natu- 
ral means of North America. It would be a trial of skill as well 
as trial by battle, of handicraft against fire arms. Great Britain 
compelled the United States to double their impost, which would, 
at the same time that it increased revenue, foster American 
fabrics. On the other hand, the supply of American raw materials 
for English manufactures for the army and navy would be stop- 
ped, and would be driven to France. The jeopardy of Canada, 
too, was felt and confessed. Undoubtedly, said the Times news- 
paper, we deprecate war with America, though we cannot dread 
it. She thinks that we have already enough on our hands in con- 
tending with France, and we desire no more certainly. We are 
now the only bulwark of the world, a little speck between the 
Old and the New World, contending with both; with one arm 
beating the armies of the continental master of Europe, with the 
other we must smite his American prsefect. Bonaparte desires 
us to abandon our maritime rights : America, lending herself to 
him, that we should let her have our trade. 

These were pleas, if not cries, of desperation rather than defi- 
ance. Great Britain claimed the sea as her domain. The orders 
in. council were said in Parliament to be a system of self-defence 
to prevent the commerce of America from coming into competi- 
tion with that of England : retaliatory, not upon France, but 
upon the United States for entering into commercial competition 
with the sovereign of the seas. Although the Berlin and Milan 
decrees were revoked, yet the English Commons on the 13th of 
February, 1812, by a vote of 136 to 23, rejected Whitbread's 
motion to repeal the orders in council, which the prime minister, 
Percival, resisted because Great Britain had a right to do what- 
ever was necessary to counteract the alleged injustice of France. 
From the present maritime strength of the United States we can 
hardly realize that epoch of belligerent despotism, when England 
and France arbitrarily undertook and well-nigh succeeded to 
compel all nations to submit to a sea yoke which now would be 
repelled by all— against which every man in this country would 
rise in arms. Their injustice had been so long borne by the 
United States that both of them believed it would never be 



CHAP. XII.] BRITISH OFFER PEACE. 447 

resisted beyond complaint and remonstrance. When at length, 
surprised by war, England still thought commercial gain the only 
cause of it, and considered all difficulty removed by repealing her 
orders in council. But Madison deemed impressment of seamen 
another substantial and a sufficient grievance, which he had long 
combated by irresistible reason. He therefore at once refused 
the armistice Dearborn subscribed with Baynes, for suspending 
resort to arms, and fortunately persevered in hostilities, which, if 
then interrupted, would have prevented all the American naval 
victories. Dearborn's inconsiderate acceptance of Prevost's over- 
ture might thus have rendered peace a mere suspension of 
hostilities, without the bulwark of marine power, of which this 
country has since experienced the incalculable benefits abroad 
and at home. It is a striking effect of that war, that the two 
great European powers which then, with unhesitating violation 
of national law and American rights, trampled upon our peace- 
able maritime adventures, sacrificed to unmitigated hostilities be- 
tween England and France, have lately combined by clandestine 
contrivances, without resorting to arms, to prevent the settlement 
of the boundaries of the United States as acknowledged in 1812. 
Substituting diplomacy for force is the effect of European con- 
viction from that war of American ability for self-protection. 

A friend, then a member of the executive government at 
Washington, allows me to use from his diary the following en- 
tries concerning the proposed armistice : — 

"1812. August \5lh. The Secretary of War informs me 
that the Adjutant-General of the British army in Canada, had 
arrived at Albany with a flag of truce to General Dearborn ; 
that he brought with him a letter from Sir George Prevost, Go- 
vernor-General and Commander-in-Chief in Canada, proposing 
a suspension of hostilities ; the ground of the proposal was, that 
Mr. Baker, the British Secretary of Legation, still remaining at 
Washington, was to lay before the American government certain 
dispatches forwarded to him since the repeal of the orders in 
council, which might prepare the way for negotiations for peace. 
General Dearborn, on the faith of this letter from Sir George Pre- 
vost, had consented to an armistice until he could send word to 
his government at Washington, and receive an answer. The 
secretary added that, the government having received no com- 
munication from the British government through Mr. Baker or 



448 ARMISTICE. [AUG., 1812. 

any other source, to authorize such an expectation as was con- 
veyed in Sir George Prevost's letter, General Dearborn would 
be instructed to proceed in his military operations with increased 
vigour. He (the secretary) had written him a private letter to- 
day to this effect, and it would be followed by an official one to- 
morrow. 

"August 22d. To-day Mr. Monroe read to me a dispatch 
drawn up by him, and immediately to be sent to Mr. Russell, 
our charge d'affaires at London, on the subject of the proposal 
for an armistice lately made by the Governor-General of Canada, 
Sir George Prevost, through the Adjutant-General of the British 
army who arrived at Albany. The dispatch states at large the 
reasons why it would be manifestly improper in the American 
government to accede to the proposal under the existing circum- 
stances of the two nations at the present moment. It states, 
moreover, that the proposal is not made by the British govern- 
ment itself, but only through its colonial agents, and might not 
be sanctioned in England ; and that it would be wholly unequal 
in the advantages it would give to the parties, if agreed to by 
the United States — as it would give Britain time for preparation 
in quarters where she is weak ; also, that as we had declared 
war for impressment as a main cause, to agree to this armistice 
before hearing a word from England on the subject, might look 
like giving it up. These are only some of the reasons which 
the dispatch contained. It also remarked, that the repeal of 
the orders in council, as transmitted lately, reserved a principle 
altogether disallowed by the United States, viz: a right by the 
Prince Regent to revive them or not as the conduct of France 
might make it necessary. The dispatch concludes with saying 
to Mr. Russell, that the President would be ready to agree to a 
suspension of arms on the complete repeal of the orders in coun- 
cil, and on satisfactory assurances being given that the question 
of impressment would be taken up with a view to its final ad- 
justment." 

In all probability the armistice suggested by Foster from Hali- 
fax to Prevost, and by him procured from Dearborn, was a 
scheme of the British minister, Foster, to atone for his own 
foolish assurance that war would not be declared, and Prevost's 
want of means in Canada to resist it, if vigorously waged. 

In September, 1812, Admiral Sir John Borlarc Warren, a vete- 



CHAP. XII.] ARMISTICE PROPOSED. 449 

ran officer of the British navy, arrived at Halifax, not only with 
an extensive naval command, including the Jamaica and Wind- 
ward Island stations, but also with full power to negotiate a pro- 
visional accommodation with our government. On the 30th of 
September, IS 12, he wrote from Halifax to Mr. Monroe, the Secre- 
tary of State, that the departure of Mr. Foster had devolved on the 
admiral the charge of making known to the government of the 
United States, the Prince Regent's sentiments upon the existing 
relations of the two countries. The orders in council ceased, he 
stated, nearly at the time the government of the United States 
declared war : on receipt of which, the order of the 3 1st of July, 
1812, was given to detain American vessels. Under these cir- 
cumstances, the admiral proposed an immediate cessation of 
hostilities, in order to bring about a reconciliation so interesting 
and beneficial to America and Great Britain. If the American 
government instantly recalls their letters of marque and reprisal 
against British ships, together with all orders for acts of hostility 
against territories, persons and property, with the understanding 
that immediately on receiving assurances from you to that effect, 
I shall instruct all English officers to desist from corresponding 
measures of war ; British commanders will be required to discon- 
tinue hostilities from the receipt of such notice. Should the 
American government accede to this proposal for terminating 
hostilities, Admiral Warren was authorized to arrange a revoca- 
tion of laws interdicting commerce. In default of such revoca- 
tion, he added, by the order of the 23d of June, the orders in 
council of January, 1807, and April, 1809, (the obnoxious orders,) 
are to be revived. I earnestly recommend, said Admiral Warren, 
that no time may be lost in communicating to me the decision of 
your government, persuaded as I feel that it cannot but be of a 
nature to lead to a termination of the present differences. The 
flag of truce you may charge with your reply will find one of 
my cruisers at Sandy Hook, ten days after the landing of this 
dispatch with a flag of truce which I have directed to be there 
for the purpose. 

This authentic proffer of peace put it in Madison's power 
under persuasive circumstances. No very serious steps had yet 
been taken towards hostilities. The presidential election was in 
its very crisis, and Hull's surrender had taken place, when the 
president was called upon in the autumnal solitude of the seat of 

38* 



450 ARMISTICE REJECTED. [OCT., 1812. 

government in October, 1812, just before Congress would re- 
assemble there, to determine the great question of peace or 
war submitted to his single judgment. Although strongly in- 
clined to peace, taking ground on impressment against the vast 
power of Great Britain, insisting upon it as her ancient, unques- 
tionable, domestic, and vital rule of allegiance, Madison, who 
had so long and irresistibly argued the issue, made what was 
equivalent to another declaration of war— to resist impressment 
alone. 

"The English government, on the intelligence of a declaration 
of war by the Congress of the United States, and the issue of 
letters of marque and reprisals, had done no more by way of 
retaliation than to direct that American ships and goods should 
be brought in and detained till further orders. But the disregard 
of the American government to the notified repeal of the orders 
in council and its refusal to continue the armistice agreed upon 
by the commanders on each side in Canada, being now made 
known, the Prince Regent published an order, dated October 
13th, for granting general reprisals against the ships, goods, and 
citizens of the United States, in the usual form towards a hostile 
power; concluding, however, with a declaration, that nothing 
in this order was to annul the authority before given to his 
majesty's naval commander on the American station, to sign a 
convention for recalling all hostile orders issued by the respective 
governments, with a view of restoring the accustomed relations 
of amity and commerce." 

Such was an English account of that conjuncture, published 
soon afterwards. For passive and considerate adhesion to the 
great cause of the war, the president was all that its advocates 
could desire. Great Britain had no more formidable individual 
enemy than he who deprecated war. If the activity and energy 
of his administration had equaled his own imperturbable forti- 
tude and patriotism, the misfortunes and mismanagement of the 
outset would not have occurred. 

Monroe's answer to Warren, dated Department of State, the 
27th of October, 1812, informed him that it would be very satis- 
factory to the president to meet the British government in such 
arrangements as might terminate without delay hostilities on 
conditions honourable to both nations. At the moment of the 
declaration of war, the president gave signal proof of the attach- 



CHAP. XII.] AMERICAN TERMS OF PEACE. 451 

merit of the United States to peace, by proposing an armistice 
rejected in regard to the important interest of impressment, with- 
out which no peace can be durable. The president desires to 
terminate the war on solid and durable terms: to accomplish 
which it is necessary that the subject of impressment be satisfac- 
torily arranged, and suspension of the practice during the armi- 
stice is necessary. The United States cannot admit or acquiesce 
hi the right during negotiation ; for this purpose a clear and 
distinct understanding of the parties must first be obtained. The 
orders in council having been repealed, no illegal blockades 
revived or instituted in their stead, and an understanding being 
obtained on the subject of impressment, the president is willing 
to agree to a cessation of hostilities, with a view to arrange by 
treaty, in a more distinct and ample manner and to the satisfac- 
tion of both parties, every other subject of controversy. 

The English government refusing these terms of accommoda- 
tion, war continued for the single grievance of impressment, 
with the English menace that such blockades as the repealed 
orders in council authorized, that is, illegal blockades, which 
Lord Melville in Parliament pronounced impracticable, would 
also be enforced. 

The conditions proffered by our government, through Russel, 
their charge d'affaires in London, when war was declared, were 
stated by the president in his annual message, to Congress the 
4th of November, 1812, without reference to the rejected over- 
tures from Prevost and Warren. They were, repeal of the 
orders in council, no revival of blockades violating established 
rules, a stop put to the practice of impressment, and immediate 
discharge of American seamen from British ships. In return, 
we proffered an act of Congress, not a mere executive assurance, 
for the exclusion of British seamen, nay more, all British natives 
from our vessels, provided Great Britain excluded Americans 
from hers. On these terms an armistice, to prevent hostilities 
and bloodshed, could be improved into definitive and compre- 
hensive adjustment of all depending controversies. These were 
reasonable and moderate terms ; but which, while England was 
at war with France, there was little hope she would accept, im- 
pressment, if there be any right to it, being a war right, at all 
events a war need. The act of Congress concerning seamen 
afterwards enacted, as promised, made great concessions. It dis- 
tinguishes between native and naturalized seamen, contrary to 



452 WAR FOR IMPRESSMENT. [FEB., 1813. 

the act of Parliament, the practice of all nations and the habits of 
seafaring men to take service in vessels other than those of native, 
or indeed of any permanent allegiance. It makes a distinction 
incongruous with the fundamental principle of American institu- 
tions, by which our political community is to consist of foreigners 
invited from all the world to participation of American citizen- 
ship and protection. These terms were rejected as soon as 
proffered to Great Britain. 

On the 2d of February, 1813, Castlereagh laid before Parlia- 
ment the Prince Regent's manifesto or proclamation of the 9th 
January, of that year, in which the British pretensions were set 
forth with unusual fullness, arrogance and falsification. Not only 
were our terms scornfully repudiated, but the motives of our 
government, the independence and honour of the country, were 
impugned by insolent and elaborate argument of the prominent 
English charge of American subserviency to France. English 
employment of the Indians was expressly denied in this false 
state paper, and American connivance with the French ruler 
expressly asserted ; two equally gross falsehoods, the ground- 
work of the manifesto. 

It was, by this time and by these proceedings, manifest that 
war or abject submission were the only alternatives of the. 
United States. The principles of the orders in council were 
by no means disavowed ; their practice was only suspended, 
with distinct threat of their renewal; while impressment in 
principle and practice was insisted upon. Madison's adminis- 
tration had no option left but perseverance in hostilities of which 
the English overtures for accommodation would save only the 
bloodshed, leaving most of the maritime injustice as great as 
ever. Perhaps Mr. Madison himself, certainly others of his 
cabinet, flattered themselves with a prospect of peace, soon 
after disclosed by the Russian mediation. But Great Britain 
rejected that too, and soon began the outrageous aggravation of 
wrong which is next to be exhibited. However, and not perhaps 
unduly, solicitous of peace, by insisting on freedom from the 
odious and intolerable grievance of impressment, the American 
government renewed the war issue on terms by which the 
United States might fairly stand before the world and posterity. 
On the 29th January, 1813, Felix Grundy, from the committee 
of Foreign Affairs, reported to the House of Representatives the 
bill which became the promised law the 3d March, 1813, for the 






CHAP. XII.] WAR FOR IMPRESSMENT. 453 

regulation of seamen on board the public and private vessels of 
the United States. The committee by a report at the same time 
expressed their astonishment at the rejection, by England, of the 
terms of accommodation offered by our minister to Lord Cas- 
tlereagh. Our proposition at first made to exclude British sea- 
men was enlarged so as to exclude all British native subjects not 
already naturalized, which too was rejected. No disposition for 
fair conditions of accommodation was to be found in the English 
minister's communication to ours at London, or in Admiral War- 
ren's from Halifax. They profess willingness for amicable dis- 
cussion, but will do nothing towards redress of the principal 
grievance. On a full view of the conduct of the American exe- 
cutive since the declaration of war, the committee expressed their 
entire approbation of it. It remained for the United States to take 
their final attitude and maintain it with unshaken firmness and 
constancy. The manner in which our friendly advances and 
liberal propositions had been received, in great measure extin- 
guished the hope of amicable accommodation. The committee 
thought it unnecessary to inquire what our course would have been 
respecting impressment, had the orders in council been repealed 
before the declaration of war. War having been declared, and 
impressment, one principal cause of it, remaining in full force, it 
must be provided for in pacification. The British pretension 
was maturing into a right. The period had arrived when for- 
bearance could be no longer justified. The people of America 
were one family to defend their liberties ; and had no fear of the 
result. 

The stand taken by the executive in October, 1812, and corro- 
borated by Congress in January, 1S13, were like repetition of 
the declaration of war in June, 1812. It was the national posi- 
tion, from which the United States were not to be driven but by 
force, which Madison performed a duty to the country highly 
deserving its gratitude when he maintained alone, and which 
Congress confirmed. 

Pacification refused on the terms proposed by the enemy, left 
war on the single issue of impressment, and produced fresh and 
monstrous aggravation of hostilities. All the enormities of British 
warfare, excitement of slaves and employment of savages, were 
to be exceeded by another still more abominable device. The 
United States were to be piuiished. The dogma of British in- 
disputable allegiance was to be enforced on hundreds of thou- 



454 NATURALIZATION DENIED. [1813- 

sands of American citizens and soldiers. The olive branch 
having been rejected, the sword was not the only alternative, but 
the gibbet was to be erected wherever a naturalized American 
citizen was taken in arms, if born a Briton. Impressment by- 
sea was to be imposed by extermination ashore. The armies 
and navy of the United States were to be deterred and more 
than decimated by executing their soldiers and sailors as traitors : 
by English officers, among whose soldiers and sailors were Ger- 
man, Spanish, French, Italian, and Indian levies. 

Of the American prisoners taken at Queenstown, twenty-three 
privates of the first, sixth, and thirteenth regiments of regular 
infantry were seized without any notice to American officers or 
authorities, and, as British subjects, sent to England, to be tried 
as traitors taken in arms fighting against their sovereign. The 
first and sixth were old regiments commanded, respectively, by 
Colonels Kingsbury and Simonds. The thirteenth was a new 
regiment, raised for the war, commanded by Colonel Schuyler. 
When the American commissary of prisoners in England became 
aware of this proceeding, he apprized his government of it. The 
president immediately in May, 1813, directed General Dearborn 
to confine twenty-three British prisoners as hostages for our 
twenty-three soldiers confined as traitors in England : and at the 
same time to give notice of the determination to retaliate any 
similar severity begun by England. Dearborn was a man of 
strong American sympathies and recollections. He had been 
commanding officer of the day when Washington, in an analogy 
of martial rigour, inflicted upon Major Andre the inexorable law 
of war. Dearborn, therefore, promptly and cordially vindicated 
American right by the confinement of the English prisoners, and 
gave notice of it to Prevost, the Governor-General of Canada. 
Thus the matter stood during several months without further 
action in this dreadful resort. Whenever England made a step 
in it, our officers kept pace: but nothing like a settled plan was 
divulged till the autumn of 1813. The storm muttered, but no 
more. On the same day that Admiral Warren tendered peace 
to Mr. Monroe, 30th of September, IS 12, from Halifax, he 
addressed another letter to him, complaining that Commodore 
Rodgers had seized twelve British seamen from a cartel, for 
twelve of ours taken from the Chesapeake, and he issued a pro- 
clamation to the English to uphold them in their loyal attach- 



CHAP. XII.] PERPETUAL ALLEGIANCE. 455 

rnents. Great Britain only deferred the enforcement of impress- 
ment at sea by execution of naturalized Americans taken in 
arms ashore, while she had hopes that war would cease with 
orders in council. Warren had, no doubt, his alternative orders: 
and as soon as war was the settled course of both countries, 
Great Britain, in addition to her employment of the Indians and 
revolt of the slaves, undertook to put to death a large portion 
of the American army and navy in cold blood — to execute them 
after trials in England, which could be but mockeries of justice. 
Accordingly, the Governor-General of Canada gave from his 
head-quarters at Montreal, on the 17th of October, 1813, formal 
official notice to General Wilkinson, that the British commander 
was instructed to select out of the American officers to be put 
in close confinement, as many as double the number of British 
soldiers put to death, should any be so dealt with, in conse- 
quence of death being inflicted on guilty British soldiers confined 
in England, and such selected American officers would suffer 
death immediately. And, furthermore, Prevost was instructed 
by his Britannic majesty's government to notify Wilkinson for 
the information of the government of the United States, that the 
commander of his majesty's armies and fleets on the coasts of 
America had received instructions to prosecute the war with 
unmitigated severity, against all cities, towns, and villages, be- 
longing to the United States, and the inhabitants thereof, unless 
deterred from putting to death any persons then or thereafter held 
as hostages for the purposes stated by Major-General Dearborn. 
This was the first notice of that punishment which Castlereagh, 
had resolved should be part of the American atonement for de- 
claring war. On the 1st of November, 181 3, from his head-quarters 
at Grenadier Island, General Wilkinson, with brevity and dignity 
answered this brutal threat by a letter to Prevost, simply stating 
that a copy of his letter should be immediately transmitted to his 
government, but that it could not be deterred by any considera- 
tion of life or death, of depredation, or conflagration, from the 
faithful discharge of its duty to the American nation. On the 
27th of October, 1813, Adjutant-General Baynes published, toge- 
ther with the official account of General Hampton's repulse in 
his attempt to enter Canada in September, the substance of the 
correspondence between Dearborn, Prevost, and Wilkinson, 
respecting retaliation, in general orders to the British troops. 



456 PERPETUAL ALLEGIANCE. [1813. 

They would be sensible of the Prince Regent's paternal solicitude 
for the honour and protection of the British soldiers, grossly out- 
raged in the persons of twenty-three of them confined for that 
number of traitors guilty of the unnatural and infamous crime of 
raising parricidal arms against the country that gave them birth; 
an aggravation of the cruel barbarities daily and maliciously prac- 
tised on British soldiers fallen into the hands of their American 
enemies. 

When England took her position on the dogma of perpetual 
allegiance, Generals Winchester, Chandler, and Winder, Colonel 
Lewis and Major Madison were prisoners on parole near Que- 
bec : but not one of the superior officers was seized as a hostage. 

-A dogma originally applied only to vassals, never enforced against 
lords, in the feudal ages, from whose dark codes it sprang, Eng- 
land on this ferocious revival of it, restricted to men in humble 
stations. No American above the grade of captain was confined 
as a hostage under it. At the same time the English government, 
in concert with those of Russia and Germany, employed General 
Moreau, taken from America, in the midst of naturalized French- 
men, Britons, Germans, and men of all other countries by birth, 
to serve in conjunction with Bernadotte, another elevated ex- 
ception to the rule, at the head of armies, subsidized by England 
to compel the naturalized emperor of the French to abdicate 
his throne. Moreau and Bernadotte, at the outset of their 
ascent to greatness, when in the ranks, or inferior grades, might 
have been executed as traitors, according to the English rule, 
for bearing arms against their native country. But as comman- 
ders and princes, the rule ceased to apply to them. The Earl of 
Cathcart, English ambassador in Russia, Sir Charles Stewart, 
brother of Lord Castlereagh, were with the allied armies led by 
Moreau and Bernadotte. Pozzo di Borgo, another fugitive from 
French service, like Napoleon, a Corsican by birth, was one of 
the many other eminent personages in English pay against 
France. Besides Moreau's instance, the war of 1812 furnished 
yet more immediate practical refutations of at best a harsh and 
doubtful doctrine, the enforcement of which England undertook 
to coerce by the gibbet, and Castlereagh upon thousands of his 

.unoffending Irish countrymen. Admiral Cochrane, who succeed- 
ed Admiral Warren in command of the British fleets in America 
married an American ; also, Commodore Hardy, who so long 



CHAP. XII.] RETALIATION. 457 

blockaded Decatur at New London. An act of Congress, like 
the act of Parliament, incorporating foreign seamen who marry 
in England, would it comprehend those persons if sailors before 
the mast but not when risen to command ? England thought 
proper to bring impressment in that much aggravated exercise of 
an extremely questionable principle to the standard of brute force. 
As such it was met, with no other advantage to her than in- 
creased horror of the press-gang and the gibbet, which it was 
monstrous to erect for the execution of large numbers of unof- 
fending men domesticated throughout the United States, and dis- 
posed to live in peace with England, till war commanded their 
new allegiance. They left Great Britain, most of them Ireland, 
a part of that kingdom much oppressed. They left it with no 
treasonable design. Their sole object was the pursuit of happi- 
ness elsewhere. Many of them were infants at departure from 
the home of their nativity, in search of a happier home. Injus- 
tice can scarcely be more egregious than that which would put 
to death as traitors large numbers of such inoffensive and perse- 
cuted exiles. 

Among other complaints in this country against that during 
the war of 1812, many were current of the hardships of Ameri- 
can captivity in British prisons and prison ships. Such com- 
plaints had descended from the Revolution, and there were many 
survivors in 1812, who had experienced those hardships. Their 
bitter recollections were revived by the further enormity of the 
measures of retaliation, to which our government was driven by 
the English introduction of a new and dreadful grievance. When 
the intelligence was officially published at Washington, of the 
seizure of our officers on parole in the neighbourhood of Quebec, 
and their incarceration in the towers of its impregnable fortifi- 
cations, the semi-official notice of that extremity published in the 
National Intelligencer, just before the second session of the thir- 
teenth Congress, aptly pronounced it an occasion for trying the 
temper of the nation. If the intention was to alarm and deter, 
the very opposite was the effect. It was not in the power of the 
naturalized population of the United States, even if so disposed, 
to renounce the belligerent duties of their American allegiance. 
In those quarters of the country, and particularly in the great 
cities where the Irish population was numerous, intense feelings 
of animosity to the mother country broke forth. Retaliation 
vol. I.— 39 



458 RETALIATION. [1813. 

was proclaimed from the house tops with Irish enthusiasm. The 
verse of Leviticus was appealed to : breach for breach, eye for 
eye, tooth for tooth. In the legislature of Pennsylvania it was 
unanimously resolved that while deeply anxious that a sangui- 
nary result may be averted and the calamities of war unembit- 
tered by wanton bloodshed or cruelty, we are, nevertheless, pre- 
pared, under all circumstances, to support our government in 
every measure of just retaliation to which it may be driven. 

The British press, then as mostly, coarsely abusive of this 
country, particularly the Courier, which was the ministerial 
paper, put us out of the pale of civilization for what it stigma- 
tized as Madison's chicane in breaking the bonds of allegiance. 
Parricides ought to be executed for attempting the life of their 
mother country, by impudent, monstrous and unnatural principle. 
Does Madison think we shall submit to it ? If he dare to retali- 
ate on the life of one English prisoner, he puts himself out of the 
protection of the law of nations, and must be treated as an out- 
law. Armies and navies acting against such outlaws, are ab- 
solved from all the laws of nations : hostilities may be carried on 
against them in any mode. We must support public law against 
a systematic attempt to steal away our countrymen and arm 
them against us. 

Mr. Madison proved himself fully equal to that painful crisis. 
Calm, meek and forbearing, his serene but tenacious and imper- 
turbable temper was better suited for such an encounter than a 
more irascible or violent chief-magistrate might have been. Of 
Proctor's army, whose capture just preceded the outrageous 
orders at Montreal and seizures at Quebec, several colonels and 
other superior British officers supplied the president with means 
which he did not hesitate an instant to use for retaliation. Go- 
vernor Wright introduced a bill in the House of Representatives, 
and Mr. George W. Campbell, himself, I believe, Scotch by birth, 
another in the senate, investing the president with large powers 
of retaliation. Neither of those bills became a law, however. 
Independent of executive power, officers of the army and of 
the navy, the commissary-general of prisoners, commanders of 
private armed vessels, in short, nearly all invested with authority 
even in the most disaffected parts of New England, retorted that 
last extreme of British hostility with such energy, that Great Bri- 
tain, soon forced to pause, was finally compelled to abandon the 



CHAP. XII.] RETALIATION. 459 

attempt. Sixteen of the crew of the Chesapeake, having been con- 
fined at Halifax, as soon as it was known, sixteen English sailors 
were collected from the prison ship at Salem, in Massachusetts, 
the very focus of disaffection to the war, and put in close con- 
finement in the common jail at Ipswich. In October, 1813, as 
soon as Great Britain made known her determination, no less 
than one hundred English soldiers and sailors were ordered to 
be detained for an equal number understood to have been sent 
from Halifax to England, for trial as traitors. The relatives and 
friends of the unfortunate victims of a cruel policy, torn from 
their American families and children, and threatened with death 
for having been guilty of no other crime than fleeing from priva- 
tion and persecution in the pursuit of happiness in a new world, 
were assured that at least equal numbers of such victims would 
be set apart to abide whatever might be their fate. The whole 
power of the American people, and authority of their govern- 
ment were pledged to vouchsafe them at every hazard. The 
British officers taken at the Thames, were several of them, with 
80 men confined at Newport, Kentucky. Perry's prisoners, till 
then treated with noble generosity, were put in close confinement 
in a common jail, by the marshal of Ohio. Reaction, palpably 
politic in any event, was so general and so severe, that impreca- 
tions on their own government began to be uttered by numerous 
British hostages, reduced from comfortable parole to strict con- 
finement. It is distressing to think of what a single execution 
under this shocking system of retaliation might have produced. 
Savage war and servile war would have been less revolting. 

At length in April, 1814, both governments were enabled to 
relax their respective measures of retaliation. In consequence 
of indulgence shown by Sir George Prevost to General Winder, 
during his captivity in Canada, particularly, permission to return 
home, the president felt himself called upon to extend like indulg- 
ence to British officers similarly situated. About the same time 
Prevost allowed Colonel Lewis and Major Madison, on their 
parole, to leave Quebec and return home. In consequence of 
this, the president, not to be outdone in philanthropy, and dis- 
posed to encourage abatements of the shocking system forced 
upon him by the enemy, gave directions that all British officers 
held in custody as hostages, should be permitted to go to Canada 
on parole. Thus retaliation, long terrible and menacing, began 



460 RETALIATION. [1813. 

to lose its ferocity, in a way not to irritate either nation, or mor- 
tify ours. Voluntary indulgence extended by both governments, 
sufficiently simultaneous to take from either the appearance of 
yielding, when in fact ours acted altogether on the defensive, 
opened a way for relinquishing a resort which it was impossible 
for England to persevere in without incurring universal odium. 

This removal of the gibbet by tacit retirement of both belli- 
gerents from its threatened erection, after the American execu- 
tive had resisted and defied the whole power and apparent 
determination of Great Britain to enforce by it the execution of a 
terrible assertion of her rule of allegiance, had much greater effect 
than relieving large numbers of naturalized American citizens 
from peril and alarm. It was impossible to execute what was 
threatened : and the threat only increased the hatred before felt 
against press-gangs and compulsory belligerent service. 

England never has been able to get at one time anywhere 
out of England, more than thirty thousand British troops em- 
bodied : the rest of her armies consists of foreigners. The threat 
to execute naturalized Americans, involved more lives than she 
could send British subjects from Europe to execute it ; so that to 
resist was to frustrate the design. The physical force was against 
it. Great Britain gave the United States an advantage which 
could hardly fail to be taken over her when she proclaimed the 
attempt. But the moral and political consequences of its inevita- 
ble failure were much greater than any exhibition of superior 
physical reaction by this country. The result added another, and 
perhaps the most effectual of all, to the many lessons continually 
learned, that Great Britain was not so formidable, inexorable and 
inflexible as large numbers of Americans believed. It helped to 
extirpate the colonial reverence which prevailed along'the Atlantic 
seaboard, and chiefly among the elevated and influential classes, 
amounting to an inveterate prejudice that England never yields. 
Both individual and national pride and tenacity are strong En- 
glish characteristics. And deep-rooted American impression of 
her unyieldingness was a moral force which operated much 
against this country in both wars with that. American armies, 
legislatures and communities, contained many native Americans 
who considered it almost hopeless to contend with Great Britain, 
on whom her recognition of American independence produced 
little effect to render them independent of English influence, and 



CHAP. XII.] RETALIATION. 461 

awe. When the contest was reduced to the single issue of im- 
pressment, which was the English claim to perpetuity of alle- 
giance marshaled against the American claim to naturalize all 
foreigners renouncing their native allegiance, and adopting that 
of the United States, Great Britain shrunk from the exercise of 
her sovereign right. After solemnly proclaiming and beginning 
its severest exercise, that result could not but be salutary upon 
all, and unexpected to the idolaters of her majestic domination. 
Foolish and pernicious reverence was staggered by such giving 
up on her part of an asserted principle for which, right or wrong, 
all the might of Great Britain was enlisted, with all her pride. 
It was in fact yielding the cause of the contest. Executive 
anxiety for peace adjusted a treaty at Ghent without any settle- 
ment, but simply an adjournment of this question: not, however, 
till a stream of successes by land and water rendered that ad- 
journment less unwise than it otherwise would have been. In 
the midst of our discomfitures and the British triumphs in Europe 
and America, of the year 1813, the virtual surrender by her of 
the enforcement of perpetual allegiance, was an American vic- 
tory, silent indeed, and not as much noticed then as it deserved 
to be, but vital to the controversy by which it practically appeared 
that the British principle, however plausible in theory, was inca- 
pable of enforcement. 

The English rule of allegiance, and the American of naturali- 
zation, are in irreconcilable collision. Impressment insisted on 
by them, was insufferable by us ; and a surviving grievance 
after the offensive orders in council were revoked. At the cap- 
ture of Washington, the British distributed great numbers of a 
pamphlet printed in London, entitled the right and practice of 
impressment ; forcibly, coarsely, almost brutally written, denying 
that Madison had for his war, of which impressment was the mere 
after-thought and pretext, any other motives than hopes of as- 
sisting France, and conquering Canada; and discussing the whole 
subject of allegiance, impressment and naturalization. After 
reducing the 1558 impressed American seamen, said to be our 
account, to 47 by theirs, and quoting a report of the 26th Feb- 
ruary, 1813, by a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, 
to show that of 21,000 eastern seamen, only 12 had been im- 
pressed by British cruisers, that pamphlet explained the English 
statutes of 13 Geo. 2, and 20 Geo. 3, naturalizing foreigners after 

39* 



462 RETALIATION. [1813. 

two or three years' service on board British vessels, by assert- 
ing that such naturalization is but permission to enjoy English 
rights, not protection of foreigners enjoying them against demands 
of their original sovereigns; calling Madison's view of these 
statutes foul falsehoods, only fit for an attorney's clerk. The 
author concludes that the only cause of war between the two 
countries, was not of America against England for impressment, 
but of England against America, for having carried on under 
legal and official forms, a system of fraudulent and malignant 
hostility against the British means of wealth in peace and defence 
in war; and that peace could only but readily be made by 
America's giving up her new-fangled system of public law, and 
her attempt, in spite of God and nature, to change British traitors 
and deserters into honest American citizens, acknowledging the 
right of England to impress her natives everywhere, and ceasing 
to wage war for the mere abstract principle asserted by Madison. 
On the other hand, in his annual message at the beginning of the 
second session of Congress, the president, 7th December, 1S13, 
informed us that while in Canada, natives of the United States 
were compelled to bear arms against them, some of whom we 
had taken prisoners, the commander of that province with the 
sanction of his government, had selected from the American pri- 
soners, and sent to Great Britain for trial as criminals, a number 
of individuals who had emigrated from the British dominions 
long prior to the war, and incorporated themselves into our 
political society, in the modes recognized by the law and prac- 
tice of Great Britain, and who were made prisoners of war, under 
the banners of their adopted country, fighting for its rights and 
safety. Protection of those citizens requiring an effectual inter- 
position in their behalf, a like number of British prisoners of war 
were put into confinement, with a notification that they would 
experience whatever violence might be committed on the Ameri- 
can prisoners of war. Whereupon, American officers double the 
number of British soldiers confined here, were ordered into close 
confinement, with formal notice that they would be put to death, 
in the event of retaliation by death inflicted here for it there : and 
that furthermore, the British fleets and armies were ordered in 
that event, to proceed with destructive severity against our towns 
and inhabitants. To leave no doubt of our adherence to the re- 
taliating resort imposed on us by the enemy, a correspondent 



CHAP. XII.] RUSSIAN MEDIATION. 463 

number of British officers, prisoners of war, were immediately 
put in close confinement, the president said, to abide the fate of 
those confined by the enemy, with notice to them of our determi- 
nation to retaliate any other proceedings contrary to the legiti- 
mate modes of warfare. 

While the United States were undergoing the English re- 
vengeful hostilities of 1813, including those which produced the 
terrible retaliations, threatened as before mentioned, government 
was flattered with hopes of relief from an unexpected quarter, 
by Russian mediation. The deserted and almost useless con- 
dition of our foreign relations was noticed in a former chapter. 
We had hardly a sentinel on posts where there should have been 
many ; and our only one had no sympathies for the war. In all 
Europe, Mr. John Quincy Adams was the only American foreign 
minister. American diplomatic advocates should have been 
stationed in many, if not most of the capitals of Europe, in order 
to explain and vindicate our cause and counteract the influence of 
Great Britain, always great, and never so great as then, through- 
out that continent, actively operating to misrepresent the Ameri- 
can war, and render it odious. Such counteraction would have 
been more effectual than any foreign mediation, or for bringing 
mediation about, if desirable. The English method of discre- 
diting this country in Europe was to stigmatize the war as made 
in concert with the French ruler, and to aid him in resisting 
Great Britain. 

It is not the immediate argument of this sketch to enter upon 
the quarrel in which he became involved then with all Europe — 
except Denmark. The fact is enough for our present topic that 
in the course of 1812, after our declaration of war, the immense 
dictator of France was involved in hostilities, first with Russia, 
and in 1813 with all the other potentates of Europe, but one. 
Acknowledged chief magistrate of France by every one of them, 
he was compelled by a coalition, of which Great Britain was 
the head, to abdicate the French crown, and driven into confine- 
ment in the little island of Elba. 

In 1812, by French invasion, the Russian empire was reduced 
to the mere elements of national existence, and rescued from de- 
struction by the landlords and their slaves. The emperor, almost 
dethroned, withdrew to his European capital St. Petersburgh, 
while the Asiatic metropolis, Moscow, was sacrificed for Russia. 



464 RUSSIAN MEDIATION. [SEPT., 1813. 

When the Russian conquerors, next year, overran France, proba- 
bly the French empire might have been snatched from ruin, 
as the Russian was, by as great a sacrifice. During these events 
Mr. Adams was the only American minister in Europe from the 
time of Mr. Barlow's death in December, 1812, to the arrival 
of Mr. Crawford at Paris in July, 1813. Mr. Erving's special 
mission to Denmark had closed. Mr. Russell's at London, ended 
early in September, 1S12. It was not till October, 1812, that 
Mr. Adams had information of our war, and then only by a 
letter from Mr. Russell, dated at London in September, acquaint- 
ing him that the English ministry rejected Russell's proposal 
for peace after war was declared. Not till December, 1812, 
did Mr. Adams get a duplicate of his dispatches from Wash- 
ington, dated the 1st July, 1812, to apprize him of the war de- 
clared nearly six months before; his first official communication 
of that event. Meantime the French invasion of Russia had 
been driven back to Poland, where Mr. Barlow was invited 
by the Duke of Bassano to meet the French emperor at Wilna, 
on his way to which place he died at Czarnovitch, the 26th De- 
cember. 

Jefferson, perceiving, what few Americans did, the importance 
to the United States of both political amity and commercial in- 
tercourse with the great Asiatic empire which Russia had esta- 
blished in Europe, soon after the accession of the Emperor 
Alexander, resolved on cultivating his good will. The Emperor 
Alexander was, independently of his high position, one of the 
most remarkable men of his age ; well-educated, well-informed, 
liberal, generous, and regarded this country with such kindness, 
that on the most despotic throne of the Old World, he freely ex- 
pressed his admiration of the republican institutions of the New. 
Jefferson sent Levett Harris as American consul to St. Peters- 
burgh, through whom a correspondence ensued between the 
Russian emperor and the American president, which began the 
good relations that have subsisted without interruption between 
the most absolute and the most popular of sovereignties. One 
of the last acts of Jefferson's administration was to nominate an 
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia, 
whom the Senate rejected. Soon after Madison succeeded to 
the presidency he appointed, with the Senate's concurrence, Mr. 
John Quincy Adams to that station. The first Russian envoy to 



CHAP. XII.] RUSSIAN MEDIATION. 465 

this country was Count Theodore Pahlen, one of the sons of the 
Count Pahlen who superintended the cruel assassination of the 
Emperor Paul, by which Alexander acquired the throne. From 
that event Russia ceased to be a French connection, as Paul's 
admiration of Bonaparte had rendered her, to become sometimes 
English, sometimes neutral, never, even when the Emperor 
Alexander was forced to submit to Napoleon's continental sys- 
tem, a cordial ally in the restriction of Russian commerce by the 
exclusion of English, which was distressing to the Russian em- 
pire. One of Napoleon's warmest admirers and personal friends, 
Alexander was never reconciled to his system of conquest by 
destroying commerce. The invasion of his dominions in 1812, 
was retaliated, in 1813, by that of France. And when there was 
reason to believe that the coalition of which Russia and Great 
Britain were the principal members, would triumph over the 
French, the Russian emperor proffered his mediation to put a 
stop to hostilities between the United States and Great Britain, 
which interrupted American commerce with Russia. Count 
Pahlen had then left this country, appointed minister to Brazil, 
and was succeeded here by Mr. Andrew Daschkoff. Mr. Poleti- 
ca, who followed Daschkoff as Russian minister in the United 
States, was a member of Count Pahlen's mission here. 

Mr. Adams' instructions from his own government, accompany- 
ing information of the war, were that in resorting to it against Great 
Britain, it was the desire and hope of the United States that it 
might be confined to her only. With France, our affairs in many 
important circumstances, are still unsettled; nor is there any 
certainty that a satisfactory settlement of them will be obtained. 
Should it, however, be the case, it is not probable that it will 
produce any closer connection between the United States and 
that power. It is not anticipated that any event whatever will 
have that effect. 

Such was the text of Mr. Adams' instructions received by 
him at a moment when the fortunes of Napoleon underwent 
their first great check in Russia. Thanksgivings for Russian 
successes, at which the American minister in St. Petersburgh 
assisted, were in harmony with instructions which gave him to 
understand that the United States would, under no circumstances, 
connect their war with that of France. These instructions Mr. 
Adams greatly extended, if he did not transcend them in his offi- 



466 MR - ADAMS'S NEGOTIATION. [DEC, 1813. 

cial intercourse with the Russian government, preliminary to the 
mediation it offered, and he cultivated, to put a stop to the war. 

On the 20th September, 1813, the Russian minister, Romanzoff, 
informed Mr. Adams that having made peace and established 
relations of amity and commerce with Great Britain, the emperor 
was much concerned and disappointed to find the whole benefit 
which he expected his subjects would derive commercially from 
that event, defeated and lost by the new war between the United 
States and Great Britain. He therefore suggested the Russian 
mediation in terms of great good will, which Mr. Adams met 
and answered with corresponding cordiality. In the course of his 
conversation with the Russian minister, the American envoy went 
so far as to say that he knew his government engaged in the 
war with reluctance; that it would be highly injurious both to 
the United States and to England ; that he could see no good 
result as likely to arise from it to any one. At the time of 
this confession, the Russian government had, through Lord Cath- 
cart, the English ambassador at St. Petersburgh, informed the 
English ministry of the proposed mediation, which that ministry 
forthwith refused. In December, 1813, before which time Ro- 
manzoff had shown Mr. Adams the letter to Daschkoff direct- 
ing him to proffer the mediation at Washington, the American 
minister gave the Russian assurances, not stronger, perhaps, than 
the desire of the American government, that in no event would 
the United States connect themselves with France. Repeating 
substantially the plain terms to that effect of Monroe's before- 
mentioned letter of the 1st July, 1812, Mr. Adams, on the 
11th December, 1813, told Romanzoff that the disposition of 
the American government to avoid that of France was expressed 
in terms as clear and strong as language could afford. Roman- 
zoff answering that it was the emperor's fixed determination 
to maintain friendly and commercial relations with the United 
States, as far as depended on him, in their fullest extent, asked 
Mr. Adams if he had any objection to Romanzoff's communi- 
cating to the British government itself that part of Adams' in- 
formation to Romanzoff which related to France. Mr. Adams 
replied, that on the contrary, as the British government had 
in the course of our discussion with them frequently intimated 
the belief that the American government was partial to France, 
and even actuated by French influence, he supposed that a 



CHAP. XII.] RUSSIAN MEDIATION. 467 

knowledge of this frank and explicit statement, with a due con- 
sideration of the time and occasion on which it was made, must 
have a tendency to remove the prejudice of the British cabinet, 
and produce on their part a disposition more inclining to con- 
ciliation. Accordingly Romanzoff wrote to Lieven, the Russian 
ambassador at London, instructing him to make known to Cas- 
tlereagh all that had been said by the American minister of the 
settled determination of his government respecting France. That 
communication Mr. Adams undertook to authorize on his own 
responsibility, without directions from his own government, but 
probably with their entire concurrence, as he fully made it known 
to them, and they were far from disapproving it. In December, 
IS 13, Romanzoff informed Mr. Adams that the British govern- 
ment, without accepting or rejecting the proffered Russian media- 
tion, had answered the Russian ambassador Lieven's, suggestion 
of it, that it would probably not be acceptable in America, 
where, however, it was seized with as much avidity as it was 
unhesitatingly rejected by England. As Count Romanzoff 
afterwards made known to Mr. Adams, Count Lieven's answer 
from London was, that the English ministry, in terms of much 
politeness, declined submitting to any mediation differences of a 
nature which involved the internal government of the British 
nation. 

On the 8th of March, 1813, Mr. Daschkoff, the minister at 
Washington, proffered the Russian mediation in the kindest 
manner, declaring that his master took pleasure in doing jus- 
tice to the wisdom of the government of the United States of 
America, and was convinced that it had done all that it could to 
prevent the rupture. On the 11th of March, 1S13, the Russian 
mediation was formally accepted. Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Adams, 
and Mr. Bayard, were appointed commissioners under it. The 
merchant ship Neptune, commanded by Captain Jones, brother of 
the Secretary of the Navy, was engaged to convey Messrs. Galla- 
tin and Bayard, to join Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg!), and a Rus- 
sian Secretary Schwertscoff, left Norfolk under a flag of truce on 
the 21st of March, 1813, for the British admiral's ship in the 
Chesapeake, for a safe conduct to protect the Neptune on her 
voyage. Soon after Messrs. Gallatin and Bayard repaired to 
Philadelphia to embark, with instructions which they united in 
declaring were so conciliatory that they could not fail, either to 



468 RUSSIAN MEDIATION. [JUNE, 1813. 

produce peace, or to unite the whole United States in support of 
the war. 

No such end was accomplished : On the contrary, this attempt 
at peace by mediation, like all the other schemes for reaching the 
end of war, but by its vigorous operations, though it was proper 
to embrace it, came to nothing. Mr. Gallatin, whose aversion 
to the war never abated, was so confident of peace by Russian 
mediation, that he desired to be one of the commission to go 
abroad for it. He scouted the idea as absurd of England's re- 
fusing it : and with the strength of error which characterizes mis- 
takes of superior men, insisted on the certainty of prompt pacifi- 
cation. Mr. Adams, whose long residence in Europe affected 
him with that distrust of American institutions, which sometimes 
is part of American patriotism, was so solicitous of propitiating 
England, that as an American minister he made known to Lord 
Castlereagh his opinion, that no good could result from the war 
to any one. Mr. Bayard, as a senator, voted against it. The 
war had not one official American advocate in Europe, except 
Crawford, who did not get there until Napoleon's downfall. Its 
only patron there was his conqueror, the Emperor Alexander, 
and in the insolence of intoxicating triumphs, Great Britain re- 
jected his mediation. There were some who disapproved impor- 
tuning peace by foreign mediation. I denounced it in my first 
speech in the House of Representatives, which it may be proper 
to allude to, lest this narrative should appear biased by improper 
views of the subject. Madison's administration, by all its attempts 
at conciliating the enemy, and the party countenancing the enemy, 
gained no strength, won no way toward peace. Victory would 
have done more in 1813 than all collateral resorts. Even by 
escaping all connection with France, that it might parry the loud 
and incessant blows of English influence, reverberated in the 
United States, sounding the falsehood of subserviency to the 
despotic and tottering ruler of the French — even that contagion 
was less dangerous than refraining from waging war, which it 
was impossible to do with adequate effect, while peace was 
solicited by derogatory resorts. Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Adams 
were not its most successful negotiators, but Brown and his 
companions in Canada; Jackson and his in Louisiana, and their 
naval associates everywhere. That trial of American govern- 
ment proved that free institutions are strong enough, if well ad- 



CHAP. XII.] MOREAU. 469 

ministered, to vindicate a nation by war. In 1812 and 1813 the 
despotic government of Russia was more convulsed by hosti- 
lities than the republican government of the United States, and. 
the government of France was demolished by war, while that 
of the United States was much more dismayed than endangered 
by it. 

At Philadelphia the American envoys on their way to Russia 
found General Moreau also going there, but clandestinely, hav- 
ing secretly transferred his services to the Emperor Alexander, 
that he might wreak his long-cherished vengeance on the Emperor 
Napoleon. Moreau, who had then passed several years in Phila- 
delphia, New York, and Morrisville, a village near Trenton, 
where he resided in a house before inhabited by Robert Morris, 
was a stout, square, sociable man, with fine eyes, but nothing in 
personal intercourse to remind one of the hero of Hohenlinden. 
Like Napoleon in being very talkative, he had no resemblance 
to him in the varied intelligence and fascination of his converse. 
Shooting, fishing, smoking, drinking, pastimes without mental 
employment, occupied Moreau's time; and in conversation he 
was, as in all other intellectual attractions, far inferior to Mr. 
Gallatin. He constantly spoke of Napoleon as a coward, and of 
his new nobility as men spat by a tyrant. Influenced, perha >s, 
by his wife, who was accomplished in the elegancies of physical 
education, and sighed for European opportunities to display them, 
actuated by hatred of his conqueror, the second general on the 
long roll of superior military men produced by the French Revo- 
lution, was led to put himself at the head of foreign armies, with 
another more fortunate French commander, Bernadotte, and left 
this country for Europe about the time that Messrs. Gallatin and 
Bayard did. On the 21st June, 1813, the day they entered the 
sound at the entrance of the Baltic, Moreau sailed from New 
York in charge of Schwinin, a subordinate of the Russian lega- 
tion, arrived at Gottenburg the 24th July, fell mortally wounded 
by a cannon ball at the side of the Emperor Alexander, the 26th 
of August, at the battle of Dresden, and expired the 2d Septem- 
ber, with all the solace that he could receive from enemies of his 
country. 

Mr. Adams' assurances, through Count Romanzoff and Lord. 
Cathcart, to Count Lieven and Lord Castlereagh, of the American 
government's settled determination to have no connection with 
vol. i. — 40 



470 BRITISH MINISTRY. [JULY, 1813. 

that of France, and its anxiety for conciliation with England, 
were followed up by Mr. Gallatin in a letter to Mr. Alexander 
Baring, since Lord Ashburton, whose commercial house were 
bankers of the American government in Europe, in which Mr. 
Gallatin strove to bring his mission to Castlereagh's good will 
through Mr. Baring, who, having married in this country, was 
well disposed to it. But Castlereagh, then triumphing in Wel- 
lington's successes in Spain, and Napoleon's change of fortune 
in Germany, was bent on conquering France and punishing 
America for co-operating with her. A hard, bold, reckless states- 
man, Castlereagh ^inherited Pitt's hatred of France. Pitt sunk 
into a premature grave without enjoying, like Castlereagh, the 
power of victories begun by Nelson and completed by Welling- 
ton, whose final march on the French capital where he twice 
dictated peace, is said, by a British historian, to have been more 
the work, at least the hardy conception of the inferior statesman 
than the victorious soldier. Great Britain had never been so 
great as when, with Castlereagh as prime minister of a sensual 
prince regent, who could seldom be prevailed upon to attend 
even to the indispensable routine duties of government, which dis- 
turbed the luxurious trifling of his mature age, representing a 
father incapacitated by insanity, the affairs of that vast empire 
were everywhere prosperous throughout Europe, Asia, and 
America. George the Fourth's first act, as regent, was to dis- 
card all the associations of his prior life, and throw himself jnto 
the arms of those who were no friends of America. Eldon, 
Vansittart, Buckinghamshire, Rose, Palmerston, Grant, Melville, 
Sid mouth, Castlereagh and Richmond were a ministry of a school 
in which liberal sentiments were never taught, or American rights 
tolerated. The present prime minister, Peel, as Irish secretary, 
then on the first step of the ladder of which he has ably reached 
the top, was the only one who could at that time conceive the 
reforms which American example has since wrought in England. 
The United States were despised for pusillanimous submission, 
and feeble resistance even when war was declared. They were 
detested for French subserviency. Their appeal to Russian pro- 
tection was at once an acknowledgment of weakness, and resort 
to a dangerous intervention. Great Britain felt no inducement to 
forbear the infliction due to the United States, who deserved the 
punishment which Castlereagh meditated at the same time for 



CHAP. XII.J ENGLAND REJECTS MEDIATION. 471 

America and France. Impressment was a domestic right, which 
was not a fit subject for foreign mediation. And if it were, 
Russia was not a safe umpire. Such were the sentiments of the 
English ministry when Mr. Adams and Mr. Gallatin by vain 
propitiation, attempted to solicit peace through Russian patronage. 

It is unimportant whether Lord Palmerston, then Secretary of 
War, actually wrote, or Lord Castlereagh, Secretary of State for 
foreign affairs, and prime minister, only dictated the subjoined 
paragraph from the ministerial paper, the London Courier : it 
proclaimed the national sentiment and ministerial resolution, to 
make no terms with this country till crushed to submission. 

We hope, said the Courier, the Russian mediation will be re- 
fused. Indeed we are sure it will. We have a love for our 
naval pre-eminence that cannot bear to have it even touched by 
a foreign hand. Russia can be hardly supposed to be adverse to 
the principle of the armed neutrality, and that idea alone would 
be sufficient to make us decline the offer We must take our 
stand — never to commit our naval rights to the mediation of 
any power. This is the flag we must nail to the national mast, 
and go down rather than strike it. The hour of concession and 
of compromise is past. Peace must be the consequence of punish- 
ment to America ; and retraction of her insolent demands 'mist 
precede negotiation. The thunder of our cannon must first strike 
terror into the American shores, and Great Britain must be seen 
and felt in all the majesty of her might, from Boston to Savannah, 
from the lakes of Canada to the mouths of the Mississippi. 

In another London paper it was said, Mr. Gallatin and Mr. 
Bayard are certainly going to Russia, to open a negotiation for 
peace under her mediation. On this point there cannot, we ap- 
prehend, be any doubt. Commit our naval rights to the media- 
tion of a foreign power? We hope and believe no British 
minister would entertain such an intention for a moment. 

Accordingly, the English answer to our humble suggestion of 
the Russian mediation was cold and disdainful denial. On the 
first of September, 1813, Lord Cathcart, the English ambassador 
to Russia, then with the allied armies at Toplitz, answered the 
Russian Secretary, Count Nesselrode's prior verbal communica- 
tion on this subject, that the Prince Regent had not found him- 
self in a situation to accept the mediation of his imperial majesty, 
to whose beneficient wishes, nevertheless, of seeing the war 



472 ENGLAND REJECTS MEDIATION. [NOV., 1813. 

closed, the Regent desired to give effect. With this view, having 
learned that the American envoys had arrived in Russia, not- 
withstanding that the Regent found himself under the necessity 
of not accepting the mediation of any friendly power, in the 
question forming the principal object in dispute, he was ready to 
nominate plenipotentiaries to treat directly with those of America. 
If, through Che good offices of his imperial majesty, this proposi- 
tion should be accepted, the Prince Regent would prefer that the 
conferences should be held at London, on account of the facilities 
it would give to the discussion. If this choice should meet with 
insuperable obstacles, his royal highness preferred Gottenburg 
as the place nearest to England. 

While impressment by sea and perpetual allegiance every- 
where were the English conditions, the ministry repelled Rus- 
sian or any mediation, and, though willing to listen to the Ame- 
rican prayer for peace, required that it should be submitted at 
the British metropolis, or some other place as near as possible to 
England. 

On the 4th of November, 1813, Lord Castlereagh communi- 
cated to Mr. Monroe, for the president's information, the answer 
which Lord Cathcart was directed to present to the Russian 
government, as soon as the Prince Regent was informed that 
American plenipotentiaries had been nominated to negotiate 
peace under the mediation of Russia. Lord Cathcart, from the 
imperial head-quarters, had informed Lord Castlereagh that the 
American commissioners had no objection to negotiate at Lon- 
don, and were desirous, as the British government had declared 
itself, that this business should not be mixed with the affairs of 
the continent : but that the powers of the American commissioners 
were limited to negotiate under the mediation of Russia. Under 
these circumstances Lord Cathcart's note was transmitted to the 
president, that, if disposed, he might enter upon a direct negotia- 
tion for peace. But, added Castlereagh, the terms must not be 
inconsistent with the established maxims of public law, and the 
maritime rights of the British empire. Early in January, 1814, 
Monroe answered Castlereagh's letter, regretting the English 
rejection of Russian mediation, especially as the president was 
called upon to take another course before he had heard from 
Messrs. Gallatin, Adams and Bayard. It was a delicate step to 
recede from mediation kindly offered and accepted. Neverthe- 



CHAP. XII.] RUSSIAN VICTORIES. 473 

less, the president acceded to the English proposition, and would 
take the measures depending on him for carrying it into effect 
at Gottenburg, it being presumed that his majesty the King of 
Sweden, as the friend of both parties, would readily acquiesce in 
the choice of a place within his dominions, for their pacific nego- 
tiations. 

The great successes of the allied arms, including Sweden, 
whose forces were led to battle by the elected crown prince of 
that kingdom, Bernadotte, had just then taken place. At the 
battles of Dresden and Hulm in August, Peterwalde, Dolnitz and 
Richoffswerde, in September, and Wachan and Hanau in Octo- 
ber, the flickering light of Napoleon's star was obviously going 
out. For all these victories by English stipendiaries, one of our 
commissioners to treat for peace, had attended solemn thanks- 
givings celebrated in the splendid Greek churches of St. Peters- 
burg. The popular effects of these prodigious reverses were 
deeply felt and loudly told throughout the United States. They 
occasioned in England a delirium of joy, and were hailed with 
acclamations by a large party in this country. Communicating to 
Congress the 7th of January, 1813, the correspondence concerning 
the Russian mediation, the president said, that in appreciating the 
accepted proposal of Great Britain, Congress must not fail to 
keep in mind that vigorous preparations for carrying on the war, 
could in no respect impede the progress to a favourable result, 
whilst a relaxation of such preparations, should the wishes of 
the United States for a speedy restoration of the blessings of 
peace be disappointed, would necessarily have the most injurious 
consequences. 

For the present we leave Russia in Europe and the Emperor 
Alexander's ineffectual mediation. His rebuke of Mr. Gallatin's 
importunity for peace will appear in another year, when the 
American envoys followed that monarch to London. All that 
need be added here is, that in his official communication to our 
government in 1813, he had the generous resolution to make his 
minister declare before England and the world, that he took 
pleasure in doing justice to the wisdom of the United States, 
and was convinced that they had done all they could to prevent 
the rupture, which he wished to heal. He neither intimated nor 
perceived French influence in it. 

The balance of power in Europe, and pragmatic disposition 

40* 



\r\ 



474 RUSSIAN VICTORIES. [1813. 

of all the great states of that continent, especially England and 
France, have for ages kept alive controversies for national influ- 
ence, which prevail as much in peace as war. English and French 
parties continually struggle for ascendancy in Russia, Turkey, 
Germany, Spain, and other sovereignties which ought to be self- 
sustained and independent. Those conflicting influences reached 
America; and in the war of 1812, furnished means by which 
England operated with more effect than by arms. 

European influence in America must needs be great. It is 
the most difficult consummation of American freedom to rise 
above it, and consider all foreign nations alike, as admonished by 
the declaration of independence. The war of 1812 was, for this 
accomplishment, of inestimable importance. It may surprise 
those of the present day, who have come to years of discretion 
since then, to learn that the most effective of all the moral and 
political influences operating against that war was the prejudice 
which England studiously, yet naturally and easily inculcated, 
that it was made by an American government under French 
influence. So much is this recrimination of that period faded 
away, that at present it is not easy to conceive how flagrant it 
was then. The party opposed to the war laid hold of what were 
called the Russian victories, as a lever to wield with great power, 
against Madison's administration and the war's supporters. All 
along the Atlantic seaboard, from Boston to Baltimore, the 
triumphs of the allies of England were celebrated by public 
festivals and other demonstrations of exultation, at the approach- 
ing overthrow of the French tyrant. That party contrivance in 
Boston, where such things originated, was carried to extremes at 
once ludicrous and humiliating. Eustaphieve, the Russian consul 
there, became a shrine for faction to kneel before, and a person- 
age more important than Daschkoff, the emperor's representative 
at Washington, who properly discountenanced interference on 
occasions unbecoming, he said, for Russian participation in Ame- 
rica. Eustaphieve composed a farce called the March to Paris, 
in which troops of Cossacks figured on the Boston stage, to 
crowded audiences of the New England ladies and gentlemen, 
exulting with that insignificant foreigner in what was hailed as 
the defeat of America. 

At a public entertainment given to Eustaphieve, to celebrate 
the Russian victories, one of the most conspicuous gentlemen 



CHAP. XII.] HARRISON GRAY OTIS. 475 

of Massachusetts, her frequent and eloquent representative in 
both Houses of Congress, Mr. Harrison Gray Otis, son of the 
venerable Secretary of the Senate of the United States, deli- 
vered a speech which indicated the derogatory spirit then pre- 
valent among those who, step by step, in unjustifiable opposi- 
tion, were brought eventually to the last degradation of such 
extremes in the Hartford Convention, of which that gentleman 
was a leading member, and one of the three disconcerted com- 
missioners to Congress, put to shame and confusion by victorious 
peace. In Mr. Otis' Russian speech, he did not hesitate to say 
of the nation his country was at war against, " One nation re- 
mained true to herself, and competent to sustain her liberties, but 
not competent or disposed to force upon others (meaning this) 
the benefits of protection and freedom, the value of which they 
were too stupid to distinguish, or too proud and jealous to 
accept. But suddenly the Almighty fiat, which first illumined 
creation, was repeated : God said, Let there be light, and there 
was light. A light of glorious effulgence burst from the north- 
ern vaults of Heaven. The skies of Russia sparkled with their 
peculiar splendours, and exhibited to the astonished world its 
enemy prostrate and in ruin. The basis of the disastrous policy 
which is big with ruin for our country, is undermined, and we 
are rescued from our greatest danger. The rage of the passions 
which have produced the present war will now be suddenly as- 
suaged: they are deprived of their chief aliment. With probably 
great sufferings yet to endure, bitter experience has a chance to 
make us wise before it makes us slaves." 

Party conflict so far resembles other war that success is mostly 
decisive of its character and that of the combatants. There is 
fortune of faction as well as of war. It will probably be the 
effect of the party excesses of the war of 1812 to deter similar 
attempts in future collisions; for statesmen, like generals, who 
failed in great contests, lost at least all national consideration. 
Mr. Otis, Governor Strong and Mr. Quincy were prominent 
citizens of New England, who might have contributed much to 
preserve the national influence they helped to destroy. In most 
respects less provincial than many others, Mr. Otis became a 
martyr to the effort to distinguish in war between a country and 
its government. The option is free to all. But they choose at 
their peril. Speech, the press, state legislation were perfectly 



476 ENGLISH MANIFESTO. [FEB., 1813. 

free throughout the United States in the war of 1812. But 
those who carried that freedom to licentiousness and deroga- 
tory disaffection, suffered punishment, not corporeal^ yet severe. 
Leaving them, if otherwise respectable, their provincial and 
local notability, it extinguished them as men of the American 
nation. 

It was unwholesome public sentiment in the United States to 
rejoice in the overthrow of the French empire, even with a 
military dictator or despot at its head. Still the democratic 
principle of popular sovereignty was cast down, great measures 
with a great man, however spoiled by fortune and arbitrary 
in action. The armies of Russia and Germany, in English pay, 
superintended by the English ambassador in Russia, Cathcart and 
Lord Castlereagh's brother, Sir Charles Stewart, attending those 
armies, to see that their English stipends were earned by war 
against the French, were armies of enemies to the American 
republican principle, and their triumphs were our discomfitures. 
Such was the sentiment of the great, right-minded body of the 
American nation concerning the celebration in the United States 
of Russian victories, which were not confined to New England, 
but extended along the seaboard, and one of the most offensive 
of those festivals took place at Georgetown, in the District of 
Columbia. 

Instead of Russian victories, the war party celebrated those 
of their own country, particularly those by sea, which were open 
to persons of all parties, and should have been gratifying more 
especially to the maritime and commercial population. 

When Parliament assembled on the 2d February, 1813, Lord 
Castlereagh presented the Prince Regent's proclamation or mani- 
festo of its causes as explained to the world by Great Britain, in 
the document published for that purpose the 9th January of that 
year. That war could not be avoided without the sacrifice of 
England's maritime rights, or injurious submission to France, 
this document pronounced a truth which the American govern- 
ment would not deny. Arguing at large the questions at issue 
between France and England, as if the United States were a 
party belligerent or colonial to them, it pronounced partiality to 
France to be as observable in American negotiations as in their 
measures of alleged resistance. Contingent revocation of the 
French decrees was accepted by the president as absolute, and 



CHAP. XII.] ENGLISH WAR MANIFESTO. 477 

England required to repeal the orders in council unconditionally. 
Audaciously denying employment of the Indians, this document 
boldly declared that the real origin of the contest was that spirit 
long unhappily actuating the councils of the United States; their 
marked partiality in palliating and assisting the aggressive ty- 
ranny of France ; their systematic endeavour to inflame the 
people against the defensive means of Great Britain ; their ungene- 
rous conduct towards Spain, the intimate ally of Great Britain, 
and their unworthy desertion of the cause of other neutral na- 
tions. Through the prevalence of such councils America had been 
associated in policy with France, and committed in war against 
Great Britain. This disposition of the government of the United 
States, this complete subserviency to the ruler of France, are 
evident in almost every page of the official correspondence of 
the American with the French government. Whilst contending 
against France in defence not only of the liberties of Great 
Britain, but of the world, the Prince Regent was entitled to look 
for a different result. From their common origin, from their 
common interests, from their professed principles of freedom and 
independence, the United States were the last power in which 
Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument 
and abettor of French tyranny. 

r These totally false and absurd imputations of French influence 
in America, were not only natural, but politic in England. They 
were the inveterate prejudice of a nation, for many centuries 
mostly at war, always at variance with France. But applied to 
the United States, they were egregiously false as to their govern- 
ment, and applicable only to the partial, well nigh subdued sym- 
pathies of portions of the American people, taught to be grateful 
for French aid in their revolutionary struggle with Great Britain, 
and inclined to rejoice in French emancipation from absolute 
government, by a revolution that followed their own. While to 
no great extent or depth, this was the American feeling, the in- 
fluence of England in the United States was paramount, univer- 
sal and profound. It required not only the war of 1812, but its 
English inhumanities and American successes to eradicate a colo- 
nial reverence, which infatuated large parts of the most influential 
classes of the country, and as was shown in the first chapter of 
this historical sketch, inflamed the clergy, the bar, the merchants, 
with the constituted authorities of whole states in New England, 



1/ 



478 FOREIGN INFLUENCE. [1813. 

to deplorable English subserviency. Falsely imputing to France 
a pervading influence which England alone exercised, she might 
have preserved it for ever, but for the repeated hostilities to which 
that country has driven this. Unintermitted enmity of the English 
press, and literature, commercial and territorial controversy, have 
kept up perpetual ill-will between them. At the same time, the 
course of events has been such as to alienate the governments of 
France and the United States, which, with strong political and 
commercial inducements for more extensive intercourse, have sel- 
dom, if ever, been in harmony. It is the fate of England and the 
United States to communicate mostly through commercial inter- 
course. There are in England large and powerful classes, the 
aristocracy in all its branches, noble and gentle, the great landed 
interest, the clergy, army and navy, constituting with the populace 
a great majority of Great Britain, with whom Americans have 
scarcely any communication. We deal almost exclusively with 
English merchants, manufacturers and government. In like ex- 
clusion from American public sentiment and power, the English 
government confines its agency to the American sea ports, and a 
political metropolis. With the great landed interest, the planters 
and farmers of the United States, who control the American go- 
vernment, England has no relation or knowledge Foster, the 
English minister's house at Washington, was the resort of those 
representing the commerce of the seaboard ; less educated or 
independent than the elevated classes of the rural population; 
more colonial, more obsequious to, more intimate with England, 
and less acquainted with the rest of the world. To a great 
degree the intimate relations between Great Britain and the 
United States are those of two nations of rival shop-keepers, 
their petty interests and paltry quarrels. 

.■Next to foreign rule, the most disastrous yoke of nations is 
foreign influence ; by which fetters this country, so recently inde- 
pendent, suffered more than most others ; English, French and 
Spanish regulation. Natural sympathies and colonial venera- 
tion for Great Britain, shocked by the revolution, were combated 
by the alliance offensive and defensive with France, without 
which independence was scarcely feasible, and by French revo- 
lution following American, with Frenchmen like La Fayette in 
ours, and Americans like Franklin and Jefferson in theirs. But 
French political sympathies contended in vain with natural En- 



CHAP. XII.] FOREIGN INFLUENCE. 479 

f 

glish affections.'.. Serurier, the French minister at Washington, 
when war was declared, was an isolated stranger, while Foster, 
the English minister, was at home there, surrounded by friends 
of his country. The act of Congress in April, 1812, admitting 
Louisiana, preliminary to the war, as one of the United States, 
put an end to French authority in America. Jefferson, accused 
of being under French influence, with the prescience of genius, 
and instinct of Americanism, united with Bonaparte, reviled as 
the demon who bewitched the United States to extinguish that 
influence forever on this continent. Jefferson, after several years 
residence at the capital of France, which is in many respects the 
metropolis of Europe, returned indeed with sympathies for the 
revolution which he witnessed there, in its glorious outbreak, and 
preferences for French social enjoyments and convivial refine- 
ments, which nearly all prefer, who have opportunities to com- 
pare them with those of other countries, not excepting the Eng- 
lish, who are but imitators in these attractions of the French and 
Italians. But in attachment to liberty, Jefferson and his disciples 
constantly followed and exceeded, in love of equaliiy they tran- 
scended English leaders. No American more strenuously than 
he as Secretary of State, repelled the licentious follies of the first 
French revolutionary minister to the United States, Genet, more 
openly or constantly denounced the ambition of Napoleon, by 
the brilliancy of whose splendid career Jefferson was never daz- 
zled, or reconciled to its arbitrary sway. Jefferson's infirmities 
were, excessive dread of Napoleon and of war, as Napoleon's 
error was, contempt for an Anglo-American republic, whose 
capacity of resistance by sea to England he never understood. 
In all these sentiments, Madison, more reserved, was not less 
fixed than Jefferson. When a weak and ignorant minister of 
England to the United States, Foster, in his place as member of 
Parliament, stupidly vouched the impeachment of American gov- 
ernment for subserviency to that of the ruler of France, which 
was the burthen of English manifestoes, proclaimed by the cabi- 
net and press of England, echoed in New England, and reverbe- 
rated throughout the seaboard of the United States, there was 
not a member of any branch of our government, executive, legis- 
lative, or judicial, in the slightest degree guilty of the charge. It 
was an English prejudice, propagated by English influence, by 
numbers of intelligent and respectable Americans, imbued with 
horror at a French influence which had no existence. 



y 



480 FOREIGN INFLUENCE- [JUNE, 1813. 

Of Spanish influence or sympathy there was neve any^J But 
Spanish vicinage and subserviency to British influence were an 
annoyance before the war of 1812, which, during it, became in- 
sufferable. The campaign of 1813 disclosed and that of 1814 
fully manifested, that Spanish North American territories, north of 
Mexico, were footholds for English interference, dangerous to 
Spain, and a nuisance which the United States must either abate 
or remove by purchase, as was afterwards done by the treaty of 
Florida. 

The war of 1812 achieved not entirely the extinction, but a 
great reduction of British influence in this country; o which, till 
then, it benumbed the efforts and retarded the progress. Hos- 
tilities of the English press and impost, incessant enmity and 
abuse, the territorial encroachments and maritime interference of 
Great Britain, since that war, in spite of vast commercial rela- 
tions and seaport affinities, have continually still further enfeebled, 
by counteraction, British influence in the United States, which 
may soon be left with all their pristine American love of English 
liberty, and much greater equality, emancipated from detrimental 
obsequiousness./ 

While this portion of a sketch of the second war of kindred 
nations is closing, European intervention, inconceivable by either 
European or American when war between England and France 
involved this distant and pacific country in their hostilities, inter- 
vention, then inconceivable, has thrust its intrigues and trans- 
actions into North America. In strange, unexampled, incredible, 
and portentous concord the two great belligerents of Europe, 
who for many centuries disturbed the world by their quarrels 
and conquests, have united, by monstrous alliance, to limit the 
boundaries, destroy the rights of their former American establish- 
ments, and circumscribe the territories of the United States. 
Speaking with authority, the prime minister of France has pro- 
claimed a balance of power to be imposed upon North America 
by the same potentates, who inflicted that calamitous domination 
upon Portugal and Turkey, and other subordinate states of Eu- 
rope. Should that intimation of French insolence be attempted, 
the war of 1812 will have prepared the United States for a still 
more serious conflict, in which both French and English influ- 
ence will find this country a world by itself to expel the curse 
of European intermeddling by unanimous repulsion. 



CHAP. XII.] PARLIAMENT. 481 

On the 18th February, IS 13, Castlereagh made his speech in 
support of a motion for vigorous prosecution of the war against 
America. Denying that there were 15,000 impressed American 
seamen among the 145,000 seamen in the British navy, he con- 
fessed that there were 1700; and would his majesty's govern- 
ment irritate a foreign power for that inconsiderable number ? 
He commented on the manifesto of the 9th January and enforced 
its allegation of French influence in American government. His 
motion was for an humble address to be presented to his royal 
highness the Prince Regent, to acquaint his royal highness that 
we have taken into our consideration the papers laid before us 
by his royal highness' command, relative to the late discussions 
with the government of the United States of America: that 
whilst we deeply regret the failure of the endeavours of his 
royal highness to preserve the relations of peace and amity be- 
tween this country and the United States, we entirely approve 
of the resistance which had been opposed by his royal highness, 
to the unjustifiable pretensions of the American government, 
being satisfied that those pretensions could not be admitted 
without surrendering some of the most ancient, undoubted and 
important rights of the British empire ; and impressed as we are 
with these sentiments, and fully convinced of the justice of the 
war in which his majesty has been compelled to engage, his 
royal highness may rely on our most zealous and cordial support, 
in every measure which may be necessary for prosecuting the 
war with vigour, and for bringing it to a safe and honourable 
termination. 

Mr. Alexander Baring denied Lord Castlereagh's assertion 
that the American declaration of war had connection with the 
state of France or Russia, and appealed to Mr. Foster, the late 
ambassador in that country, then sitting in the House, whether 
earlier repeal of the orders in council would not have prevented 
the war. Mr. Foster betrayed, by his answer, his total igno- 
rance of the country it was his mission to comprehend. Repeal 
of the orders in council would not have prevented war. The 
government of the United States was not sufficiently master of 
the Congress to be able to do what it thought most beneficial 
for the country. Mr. Foster could not agree with Mr. Baring 
that there was no party in America friendly to France. The 
revolution had made a strong impression there. And although 
vol. i. — 41 



482 PARLIAMENT. [FEB., 1813. 

the subsequent turn of events might have detached the bet- 
ter part from them, they were yet a powerful party. There 
was also an anti-Anglican party, who took every opportunity 
to foment animosity against Great Britain. There were no 
fewer than six united Irishmen in Congress, distinguished by 
their inveterate hostility to England. The war was carried in 
Congress by that rancorous faction against the English, who 
persuaded others to join them through fear that a difference might 
break up the democratic party : and in the Senate the war mea- 
sure was carried by the opponents of government, who were 
desirous of making it unpopular. 

By such misconception of this country was English prejudice 
confirmed by a weak envoy misled by American disaffection. 
The anti-Anglican party Foster denounced to Parliament was 
that of Jefferson, Madison, Macon, Clay, Gerry, Lowndes — in 
a word, the agricultural republican party was the faction of 
United Irishmen, into whom silly Englishmen converted all Ame- 
ricans not English in their inclinations. War was the result of 
that blind misconception. When declared, its successes would 
not have been deferred but for the prevalence of English preju- 
dice in too many parts of the United States. It is not to disprove 
the alleged existence of French influence, but to show this En- 
glish error, as part of the history of that day, that American 
adoption of an English calumny must be dwelt upon. Mr. 
Baring was the only member of Parliament to gainsay it. In 
the House of Lords Earl Bathurst repeated Lord Castlereagh's 
movement, where it passed without opposition. In the Com- 
mons Ponsonby and Whitbread, Whig leaders, but faintly denied 
what Croker and Canning strongly reiterated. Canning par- 
ticularly, in a long and eloquent speech, frequently greeted with 
cheers, renewed this American disparagement : the topic on which 
he principally bestowed his eloquence being invective against the 
American government, for having taken the time when Great 
Britain was deeply engaged in the glorious struggle for the eman- 
cipation of Europe from tyranny, to impede her exertions and 
league America with the oppressor. 

These were sentiments and prejudices natural and venial, 
however mistaken, in Englishmen. It was American misfortune 
and disgrace that to so great an extent they prevailed in the United 
States; in New England, especially, where they were the common 






UA/Wf 



CHAP. XII.] MASSACHUSETTS. 483 

political and too much of the religious belief. Governor Strong's 
message on the 26th May, 1813, to the legislature of Massachu- 
setts, brought all the causes of war into review, arguing each one 
of them in favour of Great Britain. "Although," said this mes- 
sage, " in proportion to her maritime means of annoyance, we 
had suffered much greater losses from France than England, has 
not our language to France been mild and conciliatory, while to 
England we have indulged in offensive reproaches and unde- 
served asperity ? Are we encouraged by the moral qualities of 
the French government to take part in its wars ? Should we 
cultivate the friendship of France because she can do us more 
injury than England, or because her manners, religion, or policy 
is more congenial to ours ? In our embarrassed and alarming 
situation, it is indeed a very favourable circumstance, that the 
people have so very generally expressed their aversion to a French 
alliance. Such an alliance would be the greatest calamity, and 
must produce the most fatal effects. In claims liable to the least 
doubt, the claims even of an enemy should be impartially exa- 
mined. If we discover that our opinions or measures have been 
erroneous, we have the strongest motives, both from interest and 
duty, to relinquish them." 

To this message from the governor a committee of both 
Houses of the legislature of Massachusetts, on the 15th June, 
1813, responded that it was not to be expected that a moral and 
Christian people should contribute their aid in the prosecution of 
an offensive war, without the fullest evidence of its justice and 
necessity. They could not but recollect whatever the pretences 
of the Emperor of France may have been, pretences which have 
uniformly preceded and accompanied the most violent acts of 
injustice, that he was the sole authority of a system calculated 
and intended to break down neutral commerce, with a view to 
destroy the opulence and cripple the power of a rival. We 
are persuaded the United States, by a firm and dignified yet 
pacific resistance to the French decrees, might have prevented 
the recurrence of any retaliatory measures not intended to injure 
us ; and we do not hesitate to say that France merited, from our 
government, a much higher tone of remonstrance and a more 
decided opposition. After once more retouching the whole 
subject of the French decrees and British orders, this remon- 
strance denounced the war as improper, impolitic, and unjust. 



484 MASSACHUSETTS. [JUNE, 1813. 

While the oppressed nations of Europe are making a magnani- 
mous and glorious effort against the common enemy of free 
states, we alone, the descendants of the pilgrims, sworn foes to 
civil and religious slavery, co-operate with the oppressor to bind 
other nations in his chains, and divert the forces of one of his 
enemies from the mighty conflict. Were not the territories of 
the United States sufficiently extensive before the annexation 
of Louisiana, the projected reduction of Canada, and seizure 
of West Florida ? Already have we witnessed the admis- 
sion of a state, beyond the territorial limits of the United 
States, peopled by inhabitants whose habits, language, religion 
and laws are repugnant to the genius of our government, in 
violation of the rights and interests of some of the parties to 
our national compact. The hardy people of the north stood in 
no need of the aid of the south to protect them in their liberties. 
If the war into which we have been rashly plunged was under- 
taken to appease the resentment or secure the favour of France, 
deep and humiliating must be our disappointment. For, 
although the emperor is lavish in his professions, yet no repara- 
tion has been made or offered for the many outrages, indignities 
and insults he has inflicted on our government, nor for the un- 
numbered millions of which he has plundered our citizens. 
When we consider the mysterious policy which has veiled the 
correspondence of the two governments from our view, and that 
in many instances the most important measures of our govern- 
ment have been anticipated at Paris long before they were known 
to the American people, we cannot conceal our anxiety and 
alarm for our preservation from all connection with the common 
enemy of civil liberty. 

In the before-mentioned speech of Mr. Otis at the public 
entertainment held to rejoice in the Russian victories, the same 
strain of unworthy imputation against the American govern- 
ment was indulged. We have nearly been victims, said that 
gentleman, to the delirium by which the fairest portion of 
the globe has been reduced to chains and tears. The his- 
tory of our government for several years has exhibited a 
coincidence in the measures and a conformity to the plans 
of Napoleon too plain to be mistaken. It will not be very 
easy to specify any measure calculated to promote his views, 
which, according to our means and circumstances, we have not 



CHAP. XII.] BRITISH INFLUENCE. 435 

adopted. We have sacrificed our resources by embracing his 
continental system, and exchanged a state of unprecedented 
prosperity for that of voluntary and ruinous war. It is of second- 
ary consequence now to ascertain whether our unhappy condi- 
dition has arisen from obedience to his suggestions, fear of his 
power, sympathy in his policy, hatred of his rival, or a mere 
respect for his example. The tendency to a close connection in 
the event of his success was irresistible, and in such a connec- 
tion it is but too probable that our domestic peace and national 
union would have met their fate. 

By false and preposterous imputations English influence in- 
oculated many of the most intelligent people of New England, 
with absurd apprehensions of French influence. On the day 
that the legislative answer to the governor's message was adopted, 
15th of June, 1813, Mr. Quincy's resolution was also adopted 
against rejoicing for naval victories. Without treason by armed 
insurrection, schemes of disunion and coercion against Madison's 
administration were rife. Without secret correspondence or un- 
derstanding, the influence of England was as strong in Boston 
and some other parts of New England, as it was in Scotland, 
stronger than it was in Ireland, so far as hostile feeling to France, 
and everything but hostile opposition to Madison's administra- 
tion as connected with France. There was at least sympathetic 
alliance, offensive and defensive, between England and parts of 
New England. At the same time illegal commercial intercourse 
with Halifax and other adjacent British places, was as incessant 
as cupidity combined with disaffection could render it. That 
was an offence of long standing. When restrictive commercial 
measures were attempted by Jefferson to prevent war, they 
pressed severely on Eastern commerce and were evaded and 
resisted systematically, and almost universally. Mr. Otis and 
other eminent lawyers openly proclaimed the right of juries to 
defeat the efforts of government to enforce that system : so that 
when war at last followed it, the inhabitants of New England 
had been trained to insubordination, which was easily carried to 
treasonable intercourse with the enemy, when war succeeded 
embargo. During all that time, as the maritime injustice of 
France was as extensive as the limited means of that empire, 
resistance to the French ruler, and Madison his American pre- 

41* 



< 



486 BRITISH INFLUENCE. [APRIL, 1813. 

feet, was a cry naturally raised in London, and repeated in 
Boston. 

Opposition under British influence adopted every English sen- 
timent. When the Russian mediation was made public, its ex- 
istence was denied. It was said to be a contrivance of Madison 
to form an open alliance with Bonaparte. Mr. Bayard, one of 
their own party, apprised of the nature of his errand, was com- 
missioned to make peace : yet the violent opponents of war or of 
peace on any but England's own terms, declared that both he and 
Mr. Gallatin were to wait on Napoleon at Prague, and receive his 
orders. They were mere emissaries of that falling despot, whom 
the Emperor of Russia had never invited to Europe, and would 
never receive. At the same time that English journals published 
the refusal of Great Britain to submit her rights to any foreign 
mediation, American newspapers declared that the whole con- 
trivance of the' Russian mediation was a trick to prolong the ex- 
istence of Madison's power, which was falling with that of the 
ruler of France. In vain was it obvious that the Russian media- 
tion was accepted by Madison, without any communication with 
France. The successes of the coalition in Europe, and disasters 
of our Canadian warfare, had so excited both Englishmen and 
Americans who were their instruments, that both deprecated 
even peace, unless the United States should be chastised for their 
connection with Bonaparte. Those who identified their country 
with its government, set no bounds to opposition to both, save 
only not actually taking up arms against either. Twenty years 
of bloody and bitter, till then alarming, all at once amazingly 
triumphant warfare with France, had not implanted in English 
bosoms more implacable animosity to that country, than their 
influence imparted to this, in the counting houses, the bar, the 
press and the pulpits of New England, denouncing French in- 
fluence. 

Imbued with these narrow and violent sectional prejudices, 
Mr. Webster went from New Hampshire to take his seat in Con- 
gress : too wary, if not too wise to proclaim, but charged to 
represent them at the seat of government ; one of the many well- 
informed and not ill-disposed Americans, whose education, im- 
pressions and ideas were exclusively English ; who knew no other 
language, learning, commerce, law or power but those of Great 
Britain ; and under that overweening influence deprecated and 



CHAP. XII.] MR. WEBSTER'S RESOLUTIONS. 437 

denounced as unnatural, and an American subserviency to 
French influence, the independent patriotism which Franklin, 
Jefferson, and Washington inculcated. Mr. Webster left home 
to signalize his first appearance in Congress, by exposure of 
the French influence which regulated Madison's administration 
and caused the war. A few days after he took his seat, on 
the day when Eppes reported the tax bills, the 10th of June, 
1813, Mr. Webster moved five resolutions, accusing our govern- 
ment of collusion with that of France, in certain fraudulent or 
negligent conduct of the latter as to its alleged revocation of the 
Berlin and Milan decrees, which was said to have produced our 
declaration of war. It would be useless, if practicable now, to 
review for any satisfactory explanation, the controversy between 
England and France, on this the great question of that day. — 
Granting that the French government was uncandid and even 
deceptive, which was the English averment, ours was uniformly 
and fastidiously shy of all connection with it ; more so than 
became the interest of the United States. Madison distrusted 
Napoleon as much as Mr. Otis or Mr. Webster could. The 
second term of Jefferson's presidency had been a period of con- 
tinual quarrel with the Emperor of the French, from the time 
that France and England, in 1S05, began their vexations of 
American commerce. General Armstrong at Paris, had boldly 
and to the emperor offensively, presented Jefferson's strong com- 
plaints. When Madison succeeded to Jefferson's annoyances 
and sentiments in that respect, and Joel Barlow to Armstrong, as 
American minister in France, there was no cessation of diplo- 
matic hostilities, if not an aggravation of them. And unless 
Madison could be made responsible for Napoleon's ignorance of 
or double dealing with America, nothing but English prejudice 
against him could implicate us in it. In Massachusetts, vitupe- 
ration of Madison, as Napoleon's tool, was easy: for the prepon- 
derance of public prejudice was such, that any loose or unfounded 
accusation was acceptable there. But in the House of Repre- 
sentatives at Washington, it was necessary to confront a majority 
that knew better, and an executive fortified with the truth. Mr. 
Webster's resolutions, therefore, like that gentleman's public acts 
and speeches, were unexceptionably guarded in assertion. The 
short speech with which he prefaced them, was decorous and 
abstemious ; no assertion was ventured by either the speech or the 



488 WEBSTER'S RESOLUTIONS. [JUNE, 1813. 

resolutions of what at Boston and Portsmouth might be said 
"without hesitation. Even discussion was waived: all he wanted 
was inquiry. In a short and inoffensive preface he merely said 
that no repeal of the French decree appeared till after our 
declaration of war: if issued before, it had laid dormant, mere 
brutum fulmen. The whole matter was involved in doubt; 
and he moved his resolves to shed light on the transaction, in the 
discharge of what he deemed a duty to his constituents and to 
the country. Mr. Grosvenor called for the yeas and nays on 
the question of consideration, which were 122 to 28, most of the 
war party voting for them, with all its opponents. Mr. Bibb, 
not objecting to them, moved to lay them on the table, which 
was done. 

On the 16th June, the resolutions, at Mr. Webster's instance, 
were debated, and for several days after, by Mr. Grosvenor, Mr. 
Oakley, Mr. Hanson, Mr. Sheffey, Mr. Shipherd, Mr. Gaston, 
and Mr. Morris Miller, who attacked the administration, which 
was defended by Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Fisk, (of New York,) Mr. 
Sharp, Mr. Yancey, Mr. Farrow, and Mr. Bibb. The debate 
was, as usual on such occasions, elaborate and acrimonious. 
Mr. Grosvenor particularly, spoke harshly of the executive ; Mr. 
Oakley and Mr. Gaston, with ability and force : Mr. Hanson 
with fierce invective. Mr. Sharp, who was afterwards assas- 
sinated in the Beauchamp murders of Kentucky, was an elo- 
quent young man and a ready debater ; Mr. Calhoun, then 
chairman of the committee of foreign affairs, argued with a 
rapid and masterly dialectic seldom surpassed. 

He and Mr. Oakley I believe, are the only survivors who took 
part in that conflict, the most impressive suggestion of which now 
is the vain and transient nature of such party dissensions. The 
question of French influence in the United States, which then agi- 
tated the country, is hardly credible to this generation as a chief 
controversy with that. On the 21st June, Mr. Bibb said that, 
while time had not been lost in that discussion, yet, as it inter- 
fered with the tax bills then ready, he should move to go into 
committee upon them next day, which Mr. Calhoun also urged 
as much more important than Mr. Webster's resolutions. After 
Mr. Boiling Robertson, afterwards Governor of Louisiana, had 
therefore assigned at large his reasons for voting for, while he 
disapproved them, the questions on each were taken, and they 



CHAP. XII.] MR. CALHOUN'S REPORT. 489 

were adopted by large majorities ; all of their, with most of our 
party voting for them, ayes about 130 to 25 or 30 nays. Being 
referred to the committee on foreign affairs, (of which I was a 
member,) next day the chairman, Mr. Calhoun, reported that 
after examining the message and documents with all the attention 
their importance demanded, they furnished strong additional proof 
of the justice and necessity of the war, and powerful motives 
for the steady and vigorous prosecution of it, as the surest means 
of a safe and honourable peace. It can now no longer be 
doubted, that it was the pressure of our measures, combined 
with the determination of Congress to redress our wrongs by 
arms, and not the repeal of the French decrees, that broke down 
the orders in council, that dangerous system of monopoly, by 
which we were, as to our commerce, in fact re-colonized. As to 
the conduct of the executive, the language of the resolutions, 
and the motives avowed by their supporters, leave no alternative 
but to express sentiments of approbation or censure by the 
House ; and upon a full investigation of that conduct in relation 
to Great Britain and France, as disclosed in the message and 
documents, the committee were of opinion that a just course 
had been pursued towards both nations, and in no instance had 
the dignity, interests or honour of the United States been com- 
promited ; wherefore they recommended the adoption of a reso- 
lution, that the conduct of the executive, in relation to the various 
subjects referred to it, in the resolutions of the 21st June, 1813, 
meets with the approbation of the House. That report was 
referred to a committee of the whole, and made the order for 
the following Thursday. Mr. Webster and John Rhea were 
appointed the committee, to present the resolutions to the presi- 
dent, then, as formerly mentioned, confined by illness; still 
desirous of this occasion to vindicate himself from the aspersion 
of these resolutions. On the 12th July, Mr. Monroe's answer 
was brought to the House, of which 5000 copies were ordered 
to be printed. On the 20th July, Mr. Calhoun, desirous of still 
further discussion, moved that the House go into committee of 
the whole to take up the subject; but his motion failed by a 
majority, mostly adherents of the administration, of 74 to 62. 
The subject had been fully discussed. Mr. Monroe's answer 
was conclusive. Mr. Webster had gone away on leave of 
absence. The business of the session, taxation, had already 



( 



490 HANSON'S RESOLUTIONS. [DEC, 1S13. 

been, for several days, interrupted by debate on these resolutions. 
Their mover and his friends had enjoyed every opportunity, of 
which Mr. Webster had not availed himself, to substantiate them. 
Numerous printed speeches and the secretary's report exhausted 
the topic. 

No greater favour can be done an impeached party than to pro- 
voke him to full opportunity of vindication. This favour Mr. 
Webster did Mr. Madison. All the machinery and all the talents 
of government, convincing speeches and official reports, the calm 
and persuasive argument of Monroe, who had great experience 
and excellent ability for it, the wisdom of Madison, with the 
advice of his counselors, anonymous but cogent views evolved, 
semi-officially, through the National Intelligencer, were all put 
in requisition, combining a power of reaction on Mr. Webster's 
resolves, which silenced that kind of attack. Their author did 
not attempt to maintain it on the floor of the House of Repre- 
sentatives ; but got leave of absence and went home ; struck 
with the difference between bold, uncontradicted assertion of 
French influence at Boston, and its still bolder and complete 
refutation at Washington. Whatever might be said of the war, 
French influence was not one of its causes. 

In December, 1S13, at the next session of Congress, Alexander 
Hanson, editor of the Federal Republican, one of the most violent 
newspapers against Madison, renewed Mr. Webster's attempt 
in a different form, but in effect the same charge of subserviency 
to France, which Mr. Hanson repeated with much invective on 
the floor of the House of Representatives, by resolutions con- 
cerning a letter of Turreau, the French minister in this country 
in 1S09. Turreau, one of the French republican generals, a coarse 
soldier, who represented the French empire in the United States 
for several years, had sent to Robert Smith, when Secretary of 
State, an offensive letter, which the French minister was required 
to withdraw. The letter, insulting enough certainly, proved by a 
tenour of complaints, anything but harmony between France and 
our government, which for five years preceding 1809, Turreau 
complained, had so conducted itself towards that of France as not 
to merit the advantages of a liberal commercial convention. The 
American government has been drawing near England who out- 
rages its rights, and injuring France, who favours them. It per- 
sists in considering the two belligerents as doing equal injustice to 



CHAP. XII.] TURREAU'S LETTER. 49^ 

American rights. There is a general disposition to attribute 
wrongs to France in order to soften those of England. Part of 
Tnrreau's long catalogue of grievances, by this absurd letter, was 
complaint of American submission without resistance to impress- 
ment, by which the English navy was replenished with sailors, it 
said, to act against France ; it charged, too, the naturalization laws 
of the United States with seducing French mariners to leave their 
country for this. Among numerous instances of alleged wrongs 
to France, the French minister presented freedom of the American 
press and speech as intolerably insulting : that, said this inde- 
cent burlesque of diplomatic expostulation, which your insuffer- 
able free press and your irresponsible public speakers proclaim, 
not only of the emperor, at whose instance this remonstrance 
is not made, but of all France, whose rights I represent and 
must vindicate. This French rhapsody accused Jefferson's ad- 
ministration of placing obstacles in the way of reconciliation 
between France and America. It was throughout as remarka- 
ble a proof as Madison could desire of his more than freedom 
from French influence. Madison's administration, tinctured 
with British, kept far from French influence, which, from this 
letter of the minister of Napoleon, it was palpable had never 
had the slightest existence, while that of England prevailed not- 
withstanding war. 

Within a few months of the discussion provoked by Mr. Web- 
ster's resolutions, Lord Castlereagh, who caused them, (not by 
direct or criminal communication, but by overpowering English 
influence in America,) was a conqueror in the French capital, 
with all its archives in his grasp, where he found as little proof 
of American collusion with the dethroned emperor, or of any 
other French subserviency, as Mr. Webster himself discovered, 
when afterwards, as Secretary of State, the files of that depart- 
ment at Washington were in his hands, to ascertain that first 
mistake of his young statesmanship. * 

Monroe's report, after fully exhibiting the case, on the revoca- 
tion of the French decrees and British orders, averred that the 
declaration of war against England had no effect on the relations 
of the United States with France. War was declared without 
any concert or communication with the French government ; 
produced no connection or understanding with it. The ostensible 
relations were the true and only ones between the two countries. 



492 BRITISH INFLUENCE. [1813. 

American claims for French spoliations were pursued with 
energy. 

No English policy or American servility was more profound 
or noxious than their falsehood adopted here, that the United 
States made war on England, by connivance with France. En- 
glish and American authoritative publications abounded with 
that falsehood. Brock's proclamation against Hull, the first state 
paper of the conflict, intimated that it had been agreed between 
the United States and the French emperor, that Canada should be 
ceded to him when conquered by us. That prejudice was a bond 
of alliance offensive and defensive between large numbers of Ame- 
ricans and the English government, which deprived the American 
government of all amicable understanding with a nation with 
which, in a former war, the United States sought an alliance of- 
fensive and defensive. Brock's proclamation avowed and justified 
English alliance with the Indians, while it reprobated American 
alliance with France. And such was British influence, that nu- 
merous and respectable Americans implicitly believed in the right 
of England to unite with the savages, while they utterly denied 
ours to unite with the French. At a convention of delegates from 
thirty-four counties of New York, held at the capitol,in Albany, 
on the 17th and 18th of September, 1812, of which Jacob Morris 
was president, and William Henderson, secretary, it was resolved, 

That we contemplate with abhorrence, even the probability 
of an alliance with the present Emperor of France, every action 
of whose life has demonstrated that the attainment, by any 
means, of universal empire, and the consequent extinction of 
every vestige of freedom, are the sole objects of his incessant, 
unbounded and remorseless ambition. His arms, with the spirit 
of freemen, we might openly and fearlessly encounter ; but of 
his secret arts, his corrupting influence, we entertain a dread we 
can neither conquer nor conceal. It is, therefore, with the utmost 
distrust and alarm that we regard his late professions of attach- 
ment and love to the American people, fully recollecting that 
his invariable course has been by perfidious offers of protection, 
by deceitful professions of friendship, to lull his intended victims 
into the fatal sleep of confidence and security, during which the 
chains of despotism are silently wound round and riveted on 
them. 

We must distinguish between American sympathy for French 



CHAP. XII.] FRENCH REPUBLIC. 493 

freedom, offspring of American, and French influence in Ame- 
rica. When Burgoy ne's capture at Saratoga, in 1777, enabled 
Franklin to procure the first and best, the model of all American 
treaties, at Versailles in 1778, when Jefferson, after contributing 
by his wisdom to the liberal beginning of the French Revolution, 
as La Fayette, and many other Frenchmen reinforced by their 
arms the consummation of the American Revolution, which might 
never have ended as it did without their reinforcement, it would 
have been unnatural if sympathy for French emancipation had 
not pervaded the United States. It was thought indispensable 
even in England to subdue that sympathy there by the war, which 
for twenty years made head against it. Nearly every eminent 
man in the United States was the open advocate of the French 
republic. Long after the worst excesses of the Parisian mobs and 
misrule, after the king and queen, with thousands of noble vic- 
tims had fallen by the guillotine, sympathy for France was an 
American sentiment. Washington and Alexander Hamilton, 
were still proud of their titles as honorary French citizens. After 
the proclamation of neutrality in 1793, by which the onerous 
terms of the treaty of Versailles were infringed by so just a man 
as Washington, after the first French revolutionary minister to 
this country, Genet, had disgusted Jefferson by his intolerable 
excesses in 1792, after Jay's treaty of 1794 had divided parties 
on French and English influence and attachments, when Pick- 
ering, as Secretary of State, on the first of January, 1796, pre- 
sented the new French minister Adet to President Washington, 
his cordial and enthusiastic welcome by that sedate and circum- 
spect magistrate, indicated the still strong regard universally 
cherished for France. 

Born, sir, said Washington, in a land of liberty; having early 
learned its value ; having engaged in a perilous conflict to 
defend it ; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life 
to secure its permanent establishment in my own country ; my 
anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best 
wishes are irresistibly attracted, whensoever, in any country, I 
see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom. But 
above all, the events of the French Revolution have produced 
the deepest solicitude, as well as the highest admiration. To 
call your nation brave, were to pronounce but common praise. — 
Wonderful people ! ages to come will read with astonishment the 
vol. I. — 42 



494 FRENCH INTERCOURSE. [JUNE, 1812. 

history of your brilliant exploits. I rejoice that the period of 
your toils and of your immense sacrifices is approaching. I re- 
joice that the interesting revolutionary movements of so many 
years have issued in the formation of a constitution, designed to 
give permanency to the great object for which you have con- 
tended. I rejoice that liberty, you have so long embraced with 
enthusiasm, liberty, of which you have been the invincible de- 
fenders, now finds an asylum in the bosom of a regularly organ- 
ized government ; a government, which being formed to secure 
the happiness of the French people, corresponds with the ardent 
wishes of my heart, while it gratifies the pride of every citizen 
of the United States, by its resemblance to their own. On these 
glorious events, sir, accept my sincere congratulations. 

In delivering to you these sentiments, I express not my own 
feelings only, but those of my fellow-citizens in relation to the 
commencement, the progress, and the issue of the French Revolu- 
tion : and they will certainly join with me in purest wishes to the 
Supreme Being, that the citizens of our sister Republic, our mag- 
nanimous allies, may soon enjoy in peace that liberty which they 
have purchased at so great a price, and all the happiness that 
liberty can bestow. 

I receive, sir, with lively sensibility, the symbol of the triumphs, 
and of the enfranchisements of your nation, the colours of France, 
which you have now presented to the United States. The trans- 
action will be announced to Congress, and the colours will be 
deposited with the archives of the United States, which are at 
once the evidence and the memorials of their freedom and inde- 
pendence. May these be perpetual ; and may the friendship of 
the two republics be commensurate with their existence. 

Such official communion bespoke the national emotion which 
the harmonious transactions of the American and French Revo- 
lutions could not but excite. But great and rapid reaction took 
place in this country, by which English influence, superadded 
to the madness of French misconduct towards the United States, 
at last extinguished nearly every feeling of amity in the hostili- 
ties prosecuted in 1798 and 1799, till terminated by the treaty of 
the 30th September, 1800, one of the first acts of Bonaparte's 
advent to power, negotiated by his brother Joseph, with the 
American envoys Ellsworth, Davie and Murray. By that treaty 
cardinal principles were revived, as first settled with Franklin, 



CHAP. XII.] FRENCH ODIUM. 495 

at Versailles, in 1778: free ships free goods, with other founda- 
tions of international peace and maritime freedom. Soon after 
by Robert Livingston and Monroe's treaty with Bonaparte, the 
United States acquired from him, with Louisiana, the cotton, the 
sugar, the lead, the great staples of American prosperity and 
union. But the monstrous belligerent struggle between France 
and England provoked controversies with both, which prevented 
all approximation to France, while they could not subdue the 
attachments which bound this country to England. British influ- 
ence transpired from every American pore, and easily propagated 
antipathy to the dictator who stifled liberty in France. Dread 
of Bonaparte became a general and intense American feeling. 
His government was treated as an usurpation, while England was 
regarded as a natural ally, whose protection was needed by this 
country, as the last refuge of freedom, the bulwark of religion, 
the only hope of mankind. After Merry, the English minister in 
the United States, with Lord Cornwallis, by the treaty of Amiens, 
recognized Napoleon as in effect the monarch of France, anti- 
pathy to him was as prevalent and more pronounced in America 
than in La Vendee. Clergy, bar, merchants, governors, legisla- 
tures, judiciary were, in 1813, fast approaching to open resistance 
to the war against England, lest it should involve alliance with 
France. Militia were withheld and debauched. The national 
administration was villified as what they were called in England, 
preefects of Bonaparte. County meetings were held in Massa- 
chusetts, resolving that the payment of taxes to support the war 
should be stopped. British influence begot the cry of French 
influence propagated from New England south and west wher- 
ever that indefatigable portion of the American people could carry 
their prejudice. When Benedict Arnold deserted the American 
army, he did not want the cunning to declare that he left Wash- 
ington and Greene because they were under French influence. 
With much less reason was that aspersion repeated by the peace 
party in 1812 and 1S13. Men of education, good repute, rich, 
devout, and popular, virulent with rabid disaffection to the war 
and Madison's administration, rallied to Russian and to English 
alliance, denouncing French influence which had no existence. 

Nor was it in New England alone that English influence dis- 
armed the war of great efficacy. The error of Madison's admi- 
nistration was to be deterred by British influence in America 



496 FRENCH CO-OPERATION. [JUNE, 1812. 

from such understanding with France as might have been as 
important in 1812 as French alliance was in 1782. Madison 
shrunk from what the Congress of the Revolution courted, when 
Franklin went to Paris to supplicate aid from France. While 
English allies in America were savages, with all their barbarities, 
and slaves to be armed in dreadful revolt, American government 
did not dare solicit the co-operation of the French whose fleets 
might have rendered the same services at New York and Halifax, 
in 1812, which those of the King of France rendered at New 
York and Yorktown in 1782. Such was the servitude of mind, 
the habitual control of England over the United States, till her 
own hostilities broke the charm in repeated wars, and forced 
her offspring to superadd moral to physical independence. Ma- 
dison's administration dared not ask the Emperor of the French, 
so effectually was he decried by England, to send a squadron 
of ships to scour the coasts of America. Three thousand French 
seamen in three line-of-battle ships, in June or July, 1812, would 
have found the American coasts, from Halifax to Bermuda, 
without any English naval force to resist such a squadron. It 
was easy to strike an early blow by the French marine, of 
which it is impossible to estimate the consequences. There was 
no necessity for the much deprecated alliance with France, or 
with the more dreaded ruler of the French. All that need be 
done was for the American minister in France to impress upon 
him the palpable advantage of sending a small squadron to sweep 
the western Atlantic from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of 
Mexico. The English marine, the English commerce, possi- 
bly some of the English stations and islands in America, were 
at the command of such an adventure. As soon as superior 
British fleets pursued the French, the refuge and protection of 
American ports were at their service. If Mr. Barlow, by 
Madison's instructions, instead of importuning Napoleon for 
treaties of indemnity for spoliation, had done as his successor, 
Mr. Crawford did for Louis the Eighteenth, postponed such 
demands till a more convenient moment, and impressed the 
French government with the vital importance to their marine of 
striking the fatal blow at that of England, which the coasts of 
America then invited, the consequences might have been decisive 
of the wars waging both in Europe and America. British influ- 
ence, operating through party opposition on the American admi- 



CHAP. XII.] FRENCH ERROR. 



497 



nistration, forbade the attempt or suggestion of it. Castlereagh's 
false manifesto, Foster's absurd calumny in Parliament, Canning's 
invective, repeated in America, propagated the English prejudice 
of French influence as effectually in parts of this country as in 
Great Britain. The American government was deterred from 
arrangements which, without alliance with France, would have 
been as politic, and might have been as decisive in 1812 as in 
1782. The ravings of the pulpit, the threats of the press, the 
maudlin eloquence of factious festivals, which should have been 
defied, and might have been despised, alarmed Madison's admi- 
nistration from instructing Barlow to intimate anything like what 
the Congress of the Revolution sent Franklin to beg. Franklin 
entreated alliance, offensive and defensive, for ever. Barlow 
was ordered to avoid all connection, which Mr. Adams assured 
Castlereagh was the settled policy of the United States, made 
known in terms as strong as language would bear. Yet without 
entangling alliance, arrangements advantageous to both nations 
were feasible. When it was believed that Mr. Barlow had ne- 
gotiated a favourable treaty, English influence broke forth in 
America, in the apprehension, disseminated by the press, of secret 
articles in the treaty, by which ten sail of the line and some 
frigates were to be put at the president's disposal. And, his 
adherents were anxious to deny and disprove the calumny ! 
During the hostilities with France in 1799, British ports gave 
refuge to American ships of war, American merchant ships took 
British convoy, the war was common cause between the United 
States and Great Britain against the French Republic. Plate 
was gladly accepted by the captain of an American frigate for 
capturing a French frigate when voted by merchants and under- 
writers in London. In the war against England, French assist- 
ance was repudiated with horror. 

The mistake of that crisis was not confined to British influence 
on American councils. The bright intelligence guiding the coun- 
cils of France, overlooked that sure occasion of striking a great 
blow at English naval supremacy. If the French emperor had 
not been entirely absorbed by preparations for transferring his 
immense warfare from Spain to Russia, surrounded as he was 
by excellent sea officers, it was impossible for him and them not 
to perceive that the many experienced mariners of France, Hol- 
land and Italy, all united under the French empire, had before 

42* 



498 TALLEYRAND. [JULY, 1812. 

them in America a theatre for reviving that naval power which 
Great Britain had crippled, but by no means destroyed. France 
had, in 1812, large fleets, well manned and provided, ready for 
sea, in many sea-ports: some of them not closely blockaded by 
the English. It was practicable for sufficient squadrons to have 
made good their way to America. The emperor had never been 
inattentive to a marine, which, though unequal to that of Great 
Britain, was, with those of Holland and Italy, then still formida- 
ble. But on the 13th of February, 1813, an order to the minister 
of marine, Decres, directed him to withdraw 12,000 men from the 
French ships in port, ready for sea, and march them as soldiers 
to German battles, thus leaving the marine without the faculty 
of sea service, which even then might have been injurious to 
England, useful to France, and important to the United States. 
The insular power which combined all Europe, except Denmark, 
for the dethronement of the ruler of France, compelled him to 
strip his navy for the final struggle, and deprived the United 
States of the co-operation which, if the French navy had been 
employed, as it might have been, might have waged our war, 
and perhaps ended that of Europe otherwise than it did next 
year. The errors of Napoleon's vast genius in the invasions of 
Spain and Russia, were perhaps not more fatal than his failing 
to see the importance of the steamboat, when proffered by Ful- 
ton, and the exposure of England when war was declared by 
America. 

An uncommon nobleman, Talleyrand — rarely do men of noble 
birth and luxurious indulgence display the constant activity, ad- 
dress and success which marked his long life of extraordinary 
eminence, seldom long out of favour with any of the many anta- 
gonist governments he served — had passed some time as an 
emigrant in the United States, where he formed impressions 
unfavourable to American republicanism, and was disgusted at 
the simplicity of manners (certainly much out of harmony with 
his loose morals and voluptuous habits) and free institutions, of 
which he was an innate enemy. It has been supposed that he 
prejudiced his imperial master, the first consul and emperor, 
against this country. For it is hard to reconcile Napoleon's un- 
questionable superiority of capacity to perceive whatever would 
benefit France, with his blindness to the opportunity which the 
American declaration of war presented for a French blow at the 



CHAP. XII.] BARLOW'S NEGOTIATIONS. 499 

English navy, that might have atoned for French naval defeats 
at the Nile and Trafalgar. From the government, the public 
journals or the people of the United States, Napoleon received 
neither information nor encouragement. But if his usual watch- 
fulness had not forsaken him, he might have learned, from the 
English newspapers, that not long before he withdrew twelve 
thousand sailors from their ships to be marched to Germany, the 
debate on Lord Darnley's motion in the House of Lords, proved 
that in July, IS 12, there were but one English line of battle ship, 
and five frigates, on the American station. 

The negotiations between the United States and France were 
watched with unworthy suspicions of French influence and Ameri- 
can collusion. Our complaints were urged with querulous impor- 
tunity, and listened to by the imperial master of most of Europe 
without umbrage, and answered with good will. But Barlow's 
letter of the 28th October, 1812, that "if there was any intention 
of coupling commercial arrangements with other views not then 
brought forward, and if they extended beyond the simplicity of 
commercial interests and the indemnities we claim, I shall be at 
no loss how to answer them," was hailed by most of the war 
party as their voice, while denounced and discredited by the other 
party as the double dealing to be suspected in all intercourse 
between our agents and those of the hateful enemy of all man- 
kind. Napoleon was under the ban of British malediction ; his 
alliance was dreaded; his overtures would have been rejected; 
his good will was not desired. 

Monroe's instructions to Barlow, on the eve of his departure for 
France, dated 26th July, 1811, after enjoining demand for a full 
explanation of the much-contested allegation of repeal of the Ber- 
lin and Milan decrees, complained of French annoyance as con- 
trary to the usages of commerce between friendly nations; the 
injustice of France insisting on American vessels bringing back 
return cargoes of French produce ; of the system of licenses ; 
of the injury done to American commerce by French influence 
exerted against it in Spain, Holland and Naples ; of the atrocity 
of burning our vessels at sea; and directed Barlow to demand 
indemnities. 

In another letter of the 21st November, 1811, transmitting the 
president's message to Congress, the Secretary of State repeated 
and enforced these instructions with still more positive injunc- 



500 NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE. [1812. 

tions. Among the measures to support the attitude taken by the 
United States, it is more than probable that a law will pass, said 
Monroe, enabling all merchants to arm their vessels in self-de- 
fence. 

Mr. Barlow sailed in the frigate Constitution, Captain Hull, 
and landed at Cherbourg, the 8th September, 1811. His recep- 
tion was flattering. The emperor was disposed, as his minister, 
the Duke of Bassano, assured Mr. Barlow, to do everything he 
could reasonably ask, to maintain a good understanding between 
the two countries. The American envoy explained all his views 
to the French minister, which had no allusion to any other than 
commercial indemnities and maritime peace. Mr. Barlow's 
views of commerce were new to Napoleon's inquisitive mind, 
engrossed with other subjects. Since the death of that much 
abused personage, and the decline of prejudices which dethroned 
and destroyed him, American history may venture to expose the 
weakness which rejected assistance from France, lest it should 
endanger the United States. Long after his demise, the American 
claims on France were adjusted for a sum (five millions), which, 
if expended in French armaments on the American coast in 
1812, might have saved the United States a much larger one. 
But the American government, accused by England of French 
subserviency, did not dare to confront British influence by such 
an aid from France, which, even if proffered, would have been 
refused. 

In January, 1812, Mr. Barlow sent home, by the frigate Con- 
stitution, assurances of a treaty of reciprocal commerce, of which 
he was so confident that he kept the sloop of war Hornet, to take 
it. Discussion of Russian and other European affairs delayed 
the negotiation, in the French capital, of our complaints to the 
great French commander in the midst of his vast preparations for 
the prodigious campaign of Russia. On the 13th October, 1812, 
the Duke of Bassano invited Mr. Barlow to Wilna to conclude, 
without further delay, arrangements desirable and conformable 
to the amicable views of both governments. Accepting that in- 
vitation, by letter, from Paris, the 28th of the same month, Mr. 
Barlow assured his government of his confidence that the propo- 
sition was with a view of expediting the business. There might, 
indeed, he added, be an intention of coupling it with other views 
not yet brought forward. If so, and they extend to objects be- 



CHAP. XII.] JOEL BARLOW. 501 

yond the simplicity of commercial interest and the indemnities 
we claim, I shall not be at a loss how to answer them, were 
Barlow's last assurance to a government fearful of Napoleon. 
The negotiation, then far advanced at Paris between him and 
the Duke of Dalberg, Mr. Barlow had no doubt would be soon 
ripened into a treaty of commerce and convention of indemnity. 
On the way to Wilna, the 26th December, 1812, Joel Barlow 
died at Czarnovitch, in Poland, of an attack of fever, which, in 
the winter of that severe climate, carried him off at the age of 
fifty-four. 

Left, by Barlow's death, without a minister in France, Ame- 
rican interests there were almost unrepresented till the arrival of 
his successor, William H. Crawford, in July, 1813. In announc- 
ing the death of the one and the appointment of the other by his 
message to Congress, at the opening of the special session in May, 
1813, the president's significant language complained that the 
French government, after the death of our minister there, had 
taken no measures for bringing the depending negotiations to a 
conclusion through their representative in the United States, 
which failure added to delays before so unreasonably spun out. 
The course the new minister will pursue was prescribed by a 
steady regard to the true interests of the United States, "which 
equally avoids an abandonment of their just demands, and a 
connection of their fortunes with the systems of other powers." 
Nothing could be plainer than such language to France, England 
and America. If alliance with France had been asked by the 
French minister, it would have met with peremptory rejection. 
No arrangement or understanding for consentaneous, without 
combined, action at sea against the common enemy of France 
and the United States, was suggested. Mr. Barlow's negotiations 
were exclusively commercial: claims for indemnities for past 
wrongs and stipulations for future security. If he had lived, or 
Napoleon had not abdicated, in all probability Franklin's treaty 
of 1778 would have been substantially renewed, without con- 
necting American fortunes with those of France. 

Joel Barlow was that uncommon American of early time, a 
Connecticut democrat, distinguished by his literary publications, 
having written several tracts, particularly one upon the privileged 
orders, which made considerable sensation in Europe. A warm 
adherent of the French Revolution, he resided many years in 



502 WM - H - CRAWFORD. [JULY, 1813. 

Paris, and was admitted, as several other eminent Americans 
were, among them Washington and Hamilton, to the honours of 
French nominal citizenship. Returning to this country, with a 
fortune acquired in France, he expended a liberal part of it in 
the typographical decorations of his national poem, the Colum- 
biad, an American performance, less read than it merits. At 
his residence, Kalorama, near the city of Washington, he was 
employed collecting materials for a history of the United States, 
when President Madison appointed him minister to France. 

Mr. Crawford sailed on his mission, as Barlow's successor, in 
the Argus, brig of war, Captain Allen, from New York, the 18th 
of May, 1813: arriving in France, when the government there 
was transferred from the capital, to distant places in Germany, 
attending the great conflicts in arms and by negotiations through- 
out that year, till Napoleon's first abdication in April, 1814. 
Mr. Crawford assumed the responsibility of not pressing Ame- 
rican claims under such circumstances; and like Mr. Barlow, he 
had no instructions for other purposes, but was to avoid alliance. 
He was a man of large stature, six feet four inches tall, and 
stout in proportion ; not graceful or elegant, but of kind and pre- 
possessing manners; of uncommon decision and great rectitude. 
Mr. Macon's laconic character of him was, that he was a man 
who could say no ; not an easy task for statesmen. Even that 
superb model of absolute kings, who considered himself the state, 
Louis the Fourteenth, answered suitors by the gentle circumlo- 
cution, nous verrons, we will see about it. Like many Ame- 
rican statesmen, Crawford had kept a school for subsistence ; and 
like too many, had killed his antagonist in a duel, a resort more 
fatal than in other countries, either from less perfect civilization, 
or greater recklessness of life. Mr. Crawford was the last 
nominee by Congressional caucus, a new word for a novel con- 
trivance, to provide for one of the most difficult American sub- 
stitutions of the elective principle, for that of divine right in the 
choice of a chief magistrate. With Mr. Crawford's nomination, 
the Congressional caucus expired ; under those blows of party 
opposition, which will always be bestowed upon whatever is 
proposed by one party, to get the better of another ; and has been 
succeeded by another less responsible contrivance. He had served 
with general approbation in the Senate of the United States, and 
as Secretary of War, and as Secretary of the Treasury, under diffi.- 



CHAP. XII.] MR. SERURIER, 503 

cult circumstances in Monroe's administration. Disappointed of 
election to the presidency, for which he had many excellent friends, 
but no extensive popularity, and retiring to Georgia, he was elected 
by the legislature, the judge of a circuit court, according to that 
peculiarity of American republicanism, which, allowing little pay 
and no pension for civil service, reduces unsuccessful competitors 
for high place to the stinted support of inferior situations. 

The gentleman who succeeded General Turreau in the French 
mission at Washington, is still living, a type of the vicissitudes 
of his government during the present century. Mr. Serurier is 
a nephew of the French marshal of 'that name who served 
with distinction under Bonaparte in his Italian campaigns, and 
was afterwards appointed hy him governor of the Hospital of 
Invalids, in which the remains of the emperor transported by 
the son of the present king of the French, from the Island of St. 
Helena, have been latterly deposited with great pomp. In 1814, 
at the capture of Paris by the allied armies, Marshal Serurier 
collected the 14,000 stands of colours taken from the enemies of 
France and displayed in that institution, committed them to the 
flames, and threw the ashes into the river Seine. His nephew, 
Mr. Serurier came to this country not long before the war of 
1812, married here in 1813, and was in 1814, upon the downfall 
of Napoleon, the only French foreign minister not displaced. On 
Napoleon's short-lived restoration, during the hundred days in 
1S15, Mr. Serurier sent in a cordial but unfortunate adhesion to 
his old master. The letter was received by the minister of 
Louis the Eighteenth, once more reseated upon the French 
throne. Doomed by that mischance to disgrace and poverty, 
Mr. Serurier returned to his country, where he remained during 
fifteen years in retirement. One of the first acts of the Revolu- 
tion of 1830, which chose Louis Philippe for King of the French, 
was to reinstate Mr. Serurier in his American mission, from 
which, after some years, he was transferred to another in Europe 
and finally to that anomalous aristocracy, the French Chamber 
of Peers, and a title without fortune. His son, born in Philadel- 
phia when the parents were there in distress, is now a viscount, 
and Secretary of the French Legation in the United States. 

On the 20th July, 1813, the president sent, by Mr. Graham, a 
special message to Congress, recommending an embargo. There 
was reason to believe, he said, that the enemy intended to com- 



504 EMBARGO. [JULY, 1813. 

bine with the blockade of our ports, special licenses to neutral 
vessels or British vessels in neutral disguises, to extract such ex- 
ports as he wanted, while our commerce remained obstructed. 
The enemy had invidiously discriminated between different ports 
of the United States ; by all which means the pressure of war 
on us would be increased and diminished on the enemy. The 
House of Representatives went into secret session, with closed 
doors, upon that message, which was referred to the committee 
on foreign relations. It was a favourite plan with the exe- 
cutive, still clinging to other than the ordinary enforcement of 
war, and much annoyed by the continual and treasonable trade 
carried on from New England to the British neighbouring pos- 
sessions, especially Halifax, where it was not uncommon for 
large quantities of American flour to arrive at a time when it 
was not plenty and the price high in the United States. Seven- 
teen thousand barrels of flour were landed at Halifax in one 
day. The day after the message was committed to the com- 
mittee on foreign relations, the chairman, Mr. Calhoun, reported 
against the measure. But that report was reversed by the House 
still in secret session, and the subject committed to a select com- 
mittee, instructed to report the bill as proposed. Mr. Speaker 
Clay constructed the select committee, exclusively of friends of 
the measure and of the administration, with Felix Grundy as 
chairman. On the 22d July, 1813, he reported an embargo bill, 
which, after a sharp contest, was immediately put through all 
the stages of enactment, and finally passed by a majority of 
thirty ; a party vote, excepting Messrs. Lowndes, Cheves, and 
Calhoun, who constantly voted against all such schemes. The 
Senate promptly rejected the bill as it went from the House. 
With this defeat of one of the president's plans, the session 
closed soon after, on the 2d August, 1813. As soon after the 
beginning of the next session as the 9th December, 1813, the 
president repeated his recommendation of an embargo. Again 
the House of Representatives closed their doors, and after many 
fruitless efforts by Mr. Pitkin, Mr. Oakley, Mr. Stockton, Mr. 
Grosvenor, Mr. Post and Mr. Hanson, to defeat or alter the 
bill, it passed the House once more on the 11th December, and 
then passed the Senate. That embargo, however, lasted only 
till the following April, when it was repealed. It had not the 
desired effect. Those who would break the law of war by 



CHAP. XII.] CONCLUSION. 505 

treasonable commerce and intercourse with the enemy, were 
not to be deterred by so much less stringent an interdict as an 
embargo. 

Yet, with all the disadvantages and reverses of the first eigh- 
teen months of war, no branch of government doing all it should 
to carry it on, the mere majority of a divided people, armed with 
the faculties, attributes and illusion of government, withstood all 
assaults, foreign and intestine, and maintained the contest till 
more experience brought better fortune. One-third of the most 
intelligent people of the United States, with more than half the 
active and convertible funds, were opposed to the war. But 
factious and party opposition to government was much more 
sound than substance. There is potency in lawful authority, 
when sustained by the mass, however denounced and thwarted 
by the most intelligent opponents. Clamour appeals in vain 
against the action of the less educated or wealthy mass directed 
by government, and vindicating a country. If the war of 1812 
had begun with the successes it ended with, the party opposed 
to it would have been annihilated during the war. Defeats and 
mismanagement endangered and embarrassed the administration, 
which its enemies would never have been able to check with 
victories to rally to. Procrastination of belligerent severities, 
postponement of burthens on the people, looking to a third power 
to mediate peace, shrinking from enlisting the co-operation of 
France, all abstinence of every kind from strenuous war, did but 
aggravate hostilities until hostile pressure forced from the nation 
exertions, which government at last seconded. 



vol. i. — 43 



506 CONCLUSION. • [DEC, 1813. 



CONCLUSION. 



We have now reached the end of the first eighteen months 
of the war, and passed the lowest point of its mismanagement 
and disasters. Henceforth it culminates; and its history will be 
more agreeable both to the writer and the reader. The trans- 
actions sketched in the volume closed here, with the year 1S13, 
both political and military, demonstrate that war is not the only 
or the greatest national evil, but that, as all extremes are dan- 
gerous, there may be injury from too long a peace as well as by 
too much war. 

The president's annual message to Congress, at our meeting, 
in December, 1S13, in a strain of persuasive optimity argued the 
alternative good which hostilities evolved; revival of military 
knowledge, almost extinct by thirty years of flattering peace ; 
gratifying proof of American capacity for vindication against 
the greatest naval power of the world ; establishment of manu- 
factures till then scarcely attempted ; acquisition of national cha- 
racter and confidence : corroboration of the federal union, stronger 
than sectional or state resistance. These and other advantages, 
Madison, a sincere, if not excessive lover of peace, extracted 
from hostilities, whose military occurrences had been mostly 
unfortunate, yet whose reverses his message varnished with hues 
of consolatory explanation to Congress and the people. 

Another volume of this historical sketch, embracing the events 
and philosophy of the succeeding year, 1814, will more than 
realize that consolation. 

Without anticipating its details, a synopsis of some of them 
is suitable valedictory to the perils and disadvantages past and 
told in the volume here closed. Early in 1814, the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, Mr. Clay, was taken from it, to 
be united with Messrs. Adams, Bayard and Gallatin, to whom 



CHAP. XII.] CONCLUSION. 507 

also Jonathan Russel, the former Charge d'Affaires of the United 
States, first in France, then in England, was joined, in the mission 
of peace sought in Europe. In Mr. Russel the war had a friend 
on that mission, in Mr. Clay a champion of western, ultramon- 
tane tenacity, indispensable to curb the anxious and yielding 
tendencies of Messrs. Adams and Gallatin. Mr. Clay took with 
him the ancient policy which Tacitus ascribes to the Germans, 
rather to resist than deprecate hostilities as the way to peace. 

And that spirit inspiring the government at home displayed 
itself in successes almost everywhere in 1S14. Having con- 
quered France, Great Britain was enabled to turn her whole 
force upon the United States. Her best troops were nevertheless 
vanquished in the north and in the south, by sea and land, in 
everything like equal encounter save one — the shameful capture 
of Washington. Accustomed to the controlling metropolitan in- 
fluence of Europe, the captors of that city supposed that its fall 
made them masters of the United States; whereas it did but rouse 
and unite nearly the whole country for strenuous hostilities. 

In the midst of its smouldering ruins Congress doubled the 
taxes and established a revenue. The deserted and prostrate 
Treasury was resuscitated by Secretary Dallas, with heroic exer- 
tions sustaining armies in Canada and Louisiana notwithstand- 
ing the disappearance of coin. The Hartford Convention in its 
fetid maturity was overwhelmed by victories which the rebuked 
authorities of New England celebrated for preserving Louisiana 
as one of the United States, and conquering peace in Canada. 
A system of war jurisprudence and international law was adju- 
dicated, which, together with the more various and extensive 
legislation of the year 1814, the commencement of the great 
internal improvements of the United States, the scientific and 
artificial inventions of men of genius, excited by the exigencies 
of war — the steamboat, the rail road, the cotton gin, in the year 
1813 and 1814 struggling into the immense development they 
have since attained, for peace and for war — will be among the 
grateful topics of another volume. 

The peace of Ghent, with our European and all other Ameri- 
can foreign relations in the year 1S15, will supply the subjects 
of a third and last volume, in which the whole foreign policy of 
the United States may be presented. 



508 CONCLUSION. [JULY, 1813. 

In the age of commercial gain which succeeded that of con- 
quest, which in its turn supplanted that of chivalry, the United 
States ventured to contend, first in traffic then in arms, with the 
great maritime ruler of mankind, and triumphed over many dis- 
advantages 

Illi juslitiam confirmavere triumphi, 
Presentes docuere Deos. Hinc ssecula discant 
Indomilum nihil esse pio, tutumve docenti. 

Claud, de iv Cows. Honorii 98. 



INDEX. 



A. 



Adams, John, 438. 

Adams, John Quincy, 72, 464, 465, 466, 

467, 468. 
Administration majority, 66. 
Albany, resolutions at convention in, 492. 
Alert, capture by the Essex, 390. 
Alexander, the Emperor, 464, 465, 473. 
Alien act, 69. 
Allen, Colonel, 94, 132. 
Allcorn, Colonel, 335. 
Allegiance, perpetual, 456, 457. 
Allen, Captain, 424. 
American Church, 48, 57. 

cruisers, 425. 

force in 1813, 293, 294. 

press, 296, 297, 298. 

terms of peace, 451. 

Americans, sentiments of, 18. 
Anderson, Joseph, 128. 
Angus, Lieutenant, 96. 
Appropriations for army and navy, 70. 
for Lawrence, his officers 

and crew, 418. 

-for captures, 416. 



Argus, 423, 424. 

Armstrong, General, 267, 295. 

his plan, 289, 290, 291, 292. 

Army, waste of life in, 284. 
Armistice proposed by Warren, 449. 

rejected, 450. 

Astor, John Jacob, 63, 71. 



B. 



Bainbridge and Stewart, 375, 378, 379. 

their remonstrances, 376. 

letter to the presi- 
dent, 379. 

Bainbridge, 390, 391,394. 

letter, 418. 

Ballard, Bland, 133. 
Barclay, Captain, 150. 

, official dispatch, 151, 

152. 



, toast, 151. 

Barker, Captain, 388. 
Baring, Alexander, 4S1, 482. 



Barlow, Joel, 72, 464, 497, 501, 502. 

his negotiations, 499, 500. 



Barry, William, 177. 
Bassano, Duke of, 500. 
Bayard, Mr., 467, 468. 
Bayres, Adjutant General, 136. 
Beasley, Major, 328, 329. 
Beck with, General, 200. 
Belvidera, frigate, 393. 
Beresford, Captain, 194. 
Berry, 389. 
Bibb, Wm. W., 105, 
Biddle, Thomas, 286. 
Biddle, Lieutenant, 389, 392. 
Binns, John, 270. 
Bishopp, Colonel, 2S9. 
Black Rock, capture of, 289. 
Blockades, 195. 
Bloom, Colonel, 94. 
Blythe, 421,427. 

Boerstler, Lieutenant Colonel, 96. 
capture of, 2S7. 



Bonaparte, Joseph, 72, 494. 

— Napoleon, 495, 497, 498, 499. 



Bowers, Surgeon, 138. 
Boyd, General, 2S9. 
British inhumanity, 153. 

ministry, 70. 

army, disaster of, 182. 

marine overrated, 200. 

plans, 333. 

embargo, 444. 

Brown, General Jacob, 281, 282. 
Brock, General, 81, 92. 

— , letter, 16th August, 1812, 



85. 



-, force at Detroit, 82. 
-, letter to Prevost, 89. 
death of, 92. 



Budgets, British and American of 1S12, 59. 
Burwell, Wm. A., 125. 
Burn, Colonel James, 286, 287. 
Burrowes, Lieutenant Wm., 421. 
Burke's remarks, 437, 43S. 



Cabot, George, 63. 
Cabinet council, 378. 



43' 



510 



INDEX 



Calhoun, Mr., 123. 

, his report, 489. 

Campbell, Mr., 71. 

Campaign, Halifax, 75. 

of 1812, end of, 102. 

, causes of, 103. 

of 1813, end of, 282. 

Campbell, George W., 431. 

Camp Meigs, 145, 146. 

■ , defeat at, 147. 

Canada, conquest of, 74. 

Canadian campaign, end of, 300, 301. 

Cannon, Colonel, 335. 

Captures, American and English, 434. 

Cass, Lewis, 82. 

Castlereagh, 470, 471, 472, 491. 

■ , speech, 481. 

Cathcart, 471, 472. 

Causes and character of war, 18, 19. 

Causes of failure of campaign of 1813, 
292. 

Chasseurs Brittaniques, 196. 

Chauncey, Commodore, 270, 428,429, 430. 

— , letter to Wm. 

Jones, Secretary of the Navy, 273. 

Chandler, General, 285. 

Cheves, Langdon, 61, 110. 

Chewitt, Colonel, 272. 

Cherokee address to the citizens of the 
United States, 322. 

Chesapeake, 391, 420. 

Church, American, 48,57. 

Chrystie, Colonel, 90. 

Clay, Henry, 122, 205, 206. 

Clarke, James, 207. 

Claiborne, Brigadier General, 336. 

Clarence, Duke of, 422. 

Clinton, De Witt, 69. 

Climate, 351. 

Coast warfare, 194, 195. 

Cocburn, Admiral George, 196. 

Cockrane, Lord, 431. 

■ , his resolutions, 432. 

Coffee, Genera], 335. 

Coles, Colonel Isaac, 305. 

Committee, select, 207, 208. 

Commercial losses by war, 426. 

Contest between United States and Great 

Britain, 17. 
Congress of 1812, 57, 58. 

, number of members, 65. 

, parties in, 65. 

, extra session in 1813, 105. 

applauded, 108. 

, appropriations for war, 109. 

, secret session of, 118. 

Constellation, frigate, 199, 200. 
Connor, Major Samuel, 272. 
Constitution, frigate, 382. 

, chased, 383. 

Connor, Midshipman, 393. 
Conclusion, 505, 506, 507. 
Cooper, Captain, 201. 
Cooper, Thomas, 207, 208. 



Correspondence between Dearborn, Pre- 
vostand Wilkinson, respecting retalia- 
tion, 455, 456. 

Corbin, Major, 201. 

Council of War, 307, 310. 

Covington, General, 305. 

Cox, Lieutenant, 395. 

, court martial, 396, 397, 

398, 399, 400, 401 , 402, 403, 404, 405, 
406, 407, 408, 409. 

Cox's defence, 410,411, 412, 413, 414, 
415. 

Crawford, Mr., 72, 468, 501, 502. 

Craig, Thomas, 85, 86, 87. 

Craney Island, 200. 

Crane, Lieutenant, 383. 

Creeks, 325, 326, 327, 344. 

killed, 348, 

dispersed, 348. 

treaties, 354, 355. 

misery, 351. 



Croghan, George, 147, 190. 

' , his gallantry, 148. 

Crutchfield, Major, 201. 

Cruizers, American, 425. 

Customs from 1808 to 1816, inclusive, 257. 

, expenses of collection, 258. 



IX 



Dallas, Mr., 71. 

•, exposition of causes and cha- 



racter of the war, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 
23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 
33, 34, 35, 36. 

Darnley, Earl of, his motion, 369. 

Daschkoff, Mr., 465, 467. 

Dearborn, Henry, 98, 100. 

, his failure to enter 



Canada. 
Dearborn, 272. 

, armistice, 445. 

•, rejected by Madison, 447. 



, removal, 288. 

, Prevost and Wilkinson's corre- 
spondence about retaliation, 455, 456. 
Debt, national, 14. 

, of the revolution, 14. 

Declaration of war, 13. 

independence, 15. 



Dekantzow, Mr., 72. 

Decatur, 390, 420, 421. 

Dennis, Colonel, 307. 

De Salaberry, Lieutenant Colonel, 298, 

299. 
Desertion, 429. 
Detroit, force at, 82. 
Diary concerning Dearborn's armistice, 

447, 448. 
Dolphin, brig, 393. 
Drummond, Lieutenant Colonel, 310. 
Dudley, Lieutenant, 96. 
Duval, William, 124. 



INDEX. 



511 



E. 

Ecconochaca, battle of, 336. 
Edwards, Captain, 139. 
Elliott, half breed Indian, 138. 
Elliott, Captain, 270. 

, Lieutenant, 272. 

Embargo, 127, 504. 

repealed, 504. 

Emmerson, Captain, 200. 
Emuchfau, battle of, 347. 
Enemy's licenses for vessels, 115. 
England's designs upon United States, 46. 
England rejects Russian mediation, 471, 

472. 
English account of Congress of 1813, 112. 

influence, 477, 478, 492, 495, 496, 

497. 

captured at St. Regis, 98. 

vessels captured, 113. 

outrages after the battle of Hamp- 
ton, 202, 203, 204. 

treachery at Raisin, 137. 

-, unworthy hostilities of, 197, 198, 



199. 



486. 



influence in New England, 485, 



naval force in America, 366. 

treatment of prisoners, 389. 

exultation for the capture of the 

Chesapeake, 422. 
apology for American victories, 

423. 
England desirous of peace, 445, 446. 

, sympathy with, 17. 

Eppes, John W., 105. 

Erie, battle of, 149, 150, 151, 152,153,154. 

, incidents of, 155, 156. 

Eustis, Wm., 60, 68, 266, 267. 

, remark of, 75, 77. 

, answer of, 289. 
European influence in America, 474. 
interference about Indians, 320, 

321. 
Eustaphieve, Russian consul, 474. 



Faulkner, Major, 200. 
Fenwick, Colonel, 90. 
Ferdinand, the Seventh, 72. 
Findley, William, 206. 
Fisk, James, 123. 
— — , Jonathan, 123. 
Flournoy, General, 326. 
Foreign intercourse fund, 70. 

influence, 478, 479, 480. 

relations, 72, 73. 

Forsyth, John, 124, 207. 

, Major, 270. 

Fort George, 310. 

attack of, 280. 

Niagara surprised, 312. 

Minims, 325, 328. 



Fort Mimms, attack on, 329, 330. 

Jackson or Toulouse, 350. 

Forty Mile Creek, battle of, 286. 

Fort Mitchell, 327, 328. 

Foster, Augustus, 193, 443, 448, 479, 481, 

482. 
France, American sympathy with, 493. 
Franklin, Dr., 269. 
French influence, 477, 4S7, 495. 
French co-operation with America, 496. 
Fromentin, Elijius, 325. 



Gallatin, Mr., 
467, 468. 



J, 71, 372,373, 374, 378, 

absence of, 120. 

, rejection of, 128. 

Garrard, James, 140. 

Gaston, Mr., 123, 207. 

Gerry, Eldridge, 60. 

German, Obadiah, 120. 

Gholson, Thomas G., 122. 

Gibson, Captain, 90. 

Giles, William B., 120. 

Girard, Stephen, 63, 71. 

Goldsborough, Charles, 375. 

Goodall, Captain, 201. 

Gordon, Captain, 200. 

Government, republican, in war, 113. 

, state and federal, 334, 335. 

, error of, 370, 371, 372. 

, popular, vast power of, 96. 

Granger, Gideon, 68, 70. 

Great Britain's designs on America, 314. 

Green, Captain, 378. 

Grosvenor, Ensign, 94. 

, Thomas, 114,206. 



Grundy, Felix, 62. 

, his bill, 452, 453. 



Guerriere, frigate, capture of, 



H. 

Halifax campaign, 75, 76, 77. 

, advantages of, 78. 



Hamilton, Alexander, 70. 

, Paul, 68, 375, 376, 377. 

Hampton, 201. 

, General Wade, 293. 

, repulsed, 299, 



300. 



-, letter of, 304. 



Hammond, Captain, 335. 
Hanson, Alexander, 123. 
Hanson's resolutions, 491. 
Hanchett, Captain, 201. 
Hart, Nathaniel, 138. 
Harrison, Gen., 145, 146. 

, retirement of, 1S9. 

— , death of, 190. 
, anecdote of, 191. 



Hartford convention, 250. 



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